


In The Land of Jaegers, Harleys, Monsters and Criminals.

by veinsoffire



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Sons of Anarchy
Genre: ClusterfuckAU, Drug Use, Family-Related Angst, In French!, Multi, Sibling Love, bad language, first fic, illegal adoption, sketchy medical procedures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 06:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6645043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veinsoffire/pseuds/veinsoffire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh Becket was raised just outside of Anchorage, Alaska.</p><p>Jackson Teller was born and raised in Charming, Northern California.</p><p>Except for age, birthdays, appearance, insomnia, crippling losses and unhealthy coping mechanisms, they had nothing in common.</p><p>Nope. Not a thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. December 11th, 1998.

**Author's Note:**

> I changed the title again.
> 
> Enjoy, leave a comment please and come yell at me on tumblr. Its-veinsoffire-stuff.

It was a bitterly cold evening in the small town of Charming, Northern California, with only fourteen days to go until Christmas.

The general air of joviality however, had no effect on Dolores Dunnigan, the senior nurse on staff at St Thomas Hospital birthing ward. Tonight was to be her last night, for come morning, Dolly would be a retired woman. Just then though, she was glaring at the highly pregnant white trash little hussy in her care, who had been thoughtless enough to get knocked up despite knowing about the very high possibility that her babies would be born with the same heart defect she had. And now, through her reckless actions, she was endangering not only one child, but two. A lifetime as a caregiver to mothers and their newborns had only made Dolly bitter, for she herself had never been blessed with that privilege, and so the image of the ungrateful sixteen-year-old getting what Dolly had wanted her entire life twice over was a painful stab to the heart.

And to think, in the very next room, a beautiful and deserving mother was grieving a child that would never be. 

Dolly had just clocked in for her last shift when a man had burst into the emergency room, his pregnant and bleeding wife in his arms. The poor dear had had to endure and hour of labor only to bring forth an unmoving, tiny little boy who would never draw his first breath. Dolly had been tasked with aftercare, and had thus learned that the young woman’s name was Dominique Becket, wife to Richard Becket, who had gone home to deliver the tragic news to their firstborn Yancy, who had just turned three little over a month ago. She had to watch the poor woman’s face crumble at the thought of her little boy’s disappointment at not getting a little brother anymore.

Six hours later, and Dolly was trying her best to make Dominique as comfortable as possible when she heard a cry from the next room. She smiled apologetically at the woman in the bed and made her way out of the room and into the next one, where a certain little hussy was unnecessarily screaming her lungs out. The doctor rushed in and after a quick, if a bit absentminded check, nodded at Dolly who, after more than forty years on the job, knew exactly what to do.

“Its time,” Dolly said in a clipped tone to the patient, who was in too much pain to really care either way. The slow and arduous process of giving birth finally began in earnest. And soon, the doctor was handing Dolly a healthy and screaming little boy. She made quick work of cleaning him up and handing him to a younger nurse before going back, only to see the doctor shake his head, a quiet infant in his hands. His pager beeped loudly, and he almost carelessly handed his burden off the Dolly, who was torn at the unfairness of it all, looking down at the near perfect little thing in her arms. She then did something quite shocking. Using her index and middle fingers, she started doing compressions on the tiny chest, all the while making her way out of the room as the younger nurse handed off the healthy babe to his mother, barely paring her senior a glance.

Dolly was operating on auto-pilot when she spotted Dominique Becket and her husband leaving their room, so when she heard a tiny gurgled gasp from the vicinity of her hands, an idea sprang forth, bright as day in her mind. She slipped into the vacated room and used the facilities there to clean and bundle the startlingly quiet but alive infant in as many blankets as fast as she dared. When he was clean and covered, she left the room and looked around. A nurse with a baby wasn't a strange sight by any means, especially not in this part of the hospital. Once again she spotted Dominique and Richard just as they were exiting the ward, probably having signed the discharge papers as she was busy, and made after them at as normal a pace as she could muster. Her heart was pounding so hard she feared it might disturb the little one she had cradled to her chest, but Dolly would be damned if a little thing such as fear would prevent her from doing the right thing.

Dolly thanked her lucky stars when she got outside and noted that the parking lot was empty aside from the young couple getting into a pickup at the far end, away from the hospital’s front doors. That's when Dolly was finally able to quicken her pace to a trot until she was close enough to yell “Wait!” without alerting the front desk.

Dominique looked up at Dolly, noted her burden, and promptly burst into tears. Her husband was startled out of his weary resignation and grief, and was further shocked to see a nurse running towards them with what was probably their baby in their arms. Shock quickly morphed into anger, however, when he saw his wife’s reaction. Thinking this some kind of sick joke, he got out of his car and intercepted the old crone before she could do any more damage to his already fragile wife.

“What the fuck is this? Do you think bringing that out here for her to see would give her some kind of closure or something? What the hell-” he was cut off by the cry of an infant, a sound that knocked the wind right out of his sails. Distantly, he heard the sound of his wife getting out of the car, and would have turned to help her had his eyes not been riveted to the wailing bundle in the old nurse’s arms. He was knocked out of his reverie quite firmly when he saw his wife take the bundle from the nurse, and the quiet words exchanged between the two. It dawned on him.

“Nicky…” he started. His mind was a jumble of half formed objections, all dying on his tongue the second his wife turns around and he gets a good look at her face. What he sees there is his undoing, as has always been the case. He has always been a willing slave to his wife’s facial expressions, and what he sees now is no different. Hope.

Not far away, Gemma was torn between the sudden and all-encompassing love of the tiny being in her arms and and the heart-wrenching grief at the absence of another as a doctor simply shakes his head and unknowingly lies. “I'm sorry ma’am. There was nothing we could do.” 

On the eve of December 11th, 1998, Jackson Nathaniel Teller and Raleigh Becket were born, but from then on, a birthday and their appearance were the only things they had in common. Raleigh would be raised just outside of Anchorage, Alaska and would be the apple of his big brother Yancy’s eye, and Jax would grow up amidst a sea of leather-clad outlaws and roaring Harley's.


	2. August 10, 2013.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fun to write. It seemingly flowed out of me.  
> Now though, I have a massive headache. So...yeah! Enjoy! Spot anything wonky, lemme know. Spot anything else, let me know anyway cuz I've never had a comment and if you're my first I'll love you forever!

Jax.

He was close to fifteen when Trespasser hit.

He’d been watching his old man tinker with the roadster, his mom puttering about in the kitchen to get dinner going. A typical Saturday.

The next thing he knew, he was running into the house after his dad because they’d heard Mom yell out a curse, and Dad already had his gun out of his shoulder-holster. He remembers thinking: “What happened to brains before bullets, Old Man?”, that he really hoped nobody in his family got shot and that he really didn't want to go to the hospital ever again because that’s where he’d had to say goodbye to Tommy not too long ago.

There was no one in the house but Mom, and she was staring with huge eyes at the tiny kitchen TV. At first, both he and his dad thought that Mom had finally gone and lost it, because why would the latest rendition of Godzilla make her look like hell had well and truly warmed over? But then he actually heard what the supposedly fake news reporter was saying. Hell really had warmed over, and the ugly fuck that used to reside there was breaking through the Golden Gate Bridge like it was the ribbon at the end of a charity race.

That night, the clubhouse of the Sons Of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original, or SAMCRO, was packed, which wasn’t unusual for a Saturday night. What was strange was the fact that every single Son, crow eater, sweetbutt and old lady in attendance was too busy staring at the huge flatscreen at one end of the main room to get up to their usual rowdiness and debauchery. For once, his mom wasn’t shitting on his head for being at the clubhouse after hours. He and Ope, his best friend, actually got roped into passing around beers by one of the prospects, because apparently a ginormous thing making its way out of the sea and trashing a city for fun was enough to make people abstain from getting laid, but not to keep them from practising their near religious alcoholic rites even more excessively than usual.

The next day was the same. As was Monday, when his mom didn't even bother to try and get him to go to school, and Tuesday, when people were starting to get anxious because it was heading in their general direction, and Wednesday, when there was a scuffle by the bar because Clay wanted to head to his hometown on the opposite coast, and Thursday, when the footage of the thing getting nuked lit up the entirety of the normally dim Main Room.

He thought after that, everything would go back to normal, and for a few days, it did. But then on Friday the next week, when he had sneaked into the club during Church, he overheard his father and Clay as they screamed at each other, the rest of their brothers eerily silent. He’d jumped about a mile high when the chapel doors were suddenly thrown open, and Clay stormed out, JT hot on his heels. That’s when he heard something that turned his entire world upside down, and it had almost nothing to do with giant alien sea monsters.

His mom was having an affair with his dad’s best friend. His dad had known all along. Clay was saying that his dad wasn't fit for the gavel anymore because he was letting another man fuck his wife, that he was a coward and that’s why he really wanted to get the club out of running guns. Clay stopped screaming then, because that’s when Jax got up from his seat at the bar, and Bobby had said his name. That’s when everyone finally noticed him. He remembers his dad saying his name as he picked up his chair, but then, only blackness.

He came back to himself what felt like hours later, sitting on the floor between his fathers legs, strong arms not his own crossed over his chest, panting as his dad fussed with his hands. They were bleeding. Why were they bleeding? He looked around and frowned. There were bits of broken chair scattered here and there, mixed through with the occasional smear of blood. Nothing new by clubhouse standards. What really had him frowning was Clay, propped against the pool table, face a bloody, rapidly swelling mess, with Chibs crouched in front of him, inspecting the damage. The rest of the Sons were all standing around looking tense, none of them making eye contact.

Fuck. Had he done this? 

Slowly, bits and pieces of the last few minutes came back to him. The argument between his dad and Clay. His mom’s betrayal, like pieces of broken glass spread throughout the various chambers in his heart, tearing at the muscle with every unrelenting pump of blood. Then nothing. 

The door to the clubhouse shattered the silence and the tension by swinging open and revealing his mother, swaggering in like she always did. Her confident stride came to a stuttering stop as she took in the scene: her son in his father’s lap with bloody hands and her not-so-secret lover propped against the pool table with a far bloodier face. The look on her face, at first confused, then shocked, then scared and finally settling into a mask of indifference is what snapped Jax out of his frozen state. Up until that moment, he hadn't really been sure what to think or feel about what his mother had done, just a blur of vague discomfort, literal blind rage and pain. Now though, he could feel cold hatred suffusing his being, spreading outwards from his chest all the way into his fingers and toes, like a balm after the searing burn of anger. It spurred him into action. 

He broke his father’s hold on him and practically leapt to his feet, feeling a brief flash of satisfaction when he saw Clay flinch in his periphery. He made eye contact with his mother, pouring all of his newfound yet vast hatred into his gaze, before turning on his heel and marching to the back of the clubhouse, towards the place that had become his safe haven ever since his little brother finally succumbed to the family flaw. He climbed up the ladder and threw open the hatch before climbing onto the roof and slamming it closed again. He perched himself on his usual spot, pulling a pilfered packet of cigarettes from his back pocket. He’d been smoking for so long by then that the process of shaking one out, popping it between his lips and flicking open his zippo to light up was automatic, almost mechanical. It was as he was closing the the little golden case with a reaper on it, a secret gift from Tig for his last birthday, that he got his first good look at his hands.

The knuckles of his right hand were split in three places, another two places on his left, all five cuts bleeding profusely, and he was pretty sure he’d need stitches for the ones over his middle fingers on each hand. The skin around the cuts were gradually turning from angry red to reddish-purple, and with the new colour came pain. He growled under his breath and gritted his teeth. No fucking way was he going back down there, he’d rather sit here and bleed.

After a while however, his fantasies of killing Clay were interrupted by someone opening the hatch. He turned his head, ready to scream bloody murder at his mother, but noted with no small amount of relief that it was only Chibs, holding up the first-aid kit like a white flag. He nodded at the Scotsman, and went back to staring at nothing as the man climbed onto the roof, even obligingly held out his hands for inspection when he sat next to him. After a few minutes of unintelligible gaelic muttering, he was handed a joint and told, thankfully in english, to take several, deep hits. Gradually his pain lessened, and he watched, kind of detached, as the man sewed up his hands using some type of thin wire, that he guessed was medical in nature, at least it was now. He was morbidly fascinated by the way his skin stretched and pulled and by how the blood was drying into a sickly brown colour, making him miss the his old friend red…he was snoring even though his eyes were open and he was sitting up, and thinking that it was kind of lame that his first hit off a joint was because he'd busted his hands on a cheating fuck’s face. Ope was gonna laugh his ass off, and Tommy…Tommy would probably look at him like he always did- used to, like Jax had hung the moon, even when he’d been acting like a complete dipshit, even when his mother was screaming at him because he’d slept with their sixteen-year-old babysitter.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, there were tears on his cheeks, and he found himself sobbing into Chibs’ shoulder like a fucking baby, saying his little brother’s name like it would make all the pain go away, like it would make his mother less of a cheating whore, like it would make the light come back into his father’s eyes, like it would make Clay fuck off to the other side of the country, like it would make the weight of the cutte he’d wanted all his life less now that he knew what he’d have to do once he had it, like it would make giant, alien sea-monsters crawl back into the ocean and never come back. Like it would turn back time and take away everything that made Jackson Teller want to eat a gun just so he could have his little brother back.

In the weeks, months and years that followed, Jax would be infinitely grateful to Chibs for letting him have that one moment of weakness and not saying a word about it to anyone else. Because in the tumultuous chasm of time that followed, he had to endure his mother’s tears and pleading looks, his father’s eyes filled with self-loathing, and every son he encountered staring at him with pity when they thought he couldn't see it. He had to endure his father crumbling further once he finally had enough of his mom’s bullshit and packed all of his shit for a permanent stay at the clubhouse. He had to endure his mother’s constant bitching and pleading looks, her pathetic attempts at winning him back. He had to endure days at school where every kid seemed to have a snide comment, and every teacher a reproachful glare. He had to endure his father’s growing disappointment every time he got a call from the principle's office because Jax had gotten into another fight, and it had his mother harping on him like everything that was going in was solely his dad’s fault. He had to endure finally getting expelled just shy of graduating, after three years of giving and receiving hell among his peers and teachers. He had to endure eventual torturous hazing at the hands of every man with a cutte as he finally became a prospect; his mother’s unwanted pride, like it was somehow all her doing; his father’s seeming indifference, like he couldn’t give less of a fuck that his son was becoming a man.

Roughly four years after that hellish day, six more Kaiju attacks and several funerals later, he got his top-rocker.

Two weeks later, having earned at least one proud look and embrace from his father, he had to endure standing beside the man’s closed casket as it was lowered into the ground, without crying, without breaking down. 

He’d had his moment of weakness, and on that day, standing in Charming’s tiny cemetery with the California sun heating the leather on his back, he swore it would be his last.

Raleigh.

He’d been tussling with his big brother, trying to get at the remote when their father snatched it from Yancy’s grip with a triumphant grin badly disguised as an admonishing glare. They’d just finished dinner, and while he knew this was usually when Mom wrangled them into doing the dishes as she packed up leftover’s and Dad watched the news, he and his brother had grabbed onto the opportunity presented when Dad got distracted by Mom running her newly done fingernails through his hair. Sensing and ‘ew’ moment rapidly heading their way, the little hellions had quietly ducked out of the kitchen as the smooching commenced. 

If Raleigh had to guess, it was probably the loud yelps they’d let out when they had both dived for the remote and came crashing down on the carpet, wriggling and pawing at each other like puppies, the fact that they were both in high school and college applications be damned. He waited for his father to order them into the kitchen, but practically whooped with delight when his father merely winked at them and turned on the TV. That sly grin, so familiar to him from years of pranks and various father-son activities, falls off his father’s face instantly, reminding him of the time he and Yancy had been at the cinemas and the power had gone out just as they were reaching the climax of the film.

He turns to his brother, who, like their father, is staring at the television with dread. Raleigh finally looks at the apparent source of the sudden and oppressing gloom filling their living room, and his jaw drops. 

There is a giant, Lovecraftian monster making its way through San Francisco, and its not being particular about where its giant claws come crashing down, unless it’s aim is to cause as much destruction as possible, which, if he thinks about it, it probably is. The thing dwarfs the sky-scrapers around it and the helicopters and various military aircrafts zooming around it look like gnats, their weapons barely worth its attention.

His dad called his mom, who was enjoying her nightly smoke, apparently, and she walked into the room with a confused “Mon Chéri?” on her lips. Her face did the same thing theirs had done when she followed his gaze to the TV. Her hand flew to her chest, and she shocked her sons to their very cores with a loud “Oh putain!”. Though both Becket boys were fluent in their mother tongue, the only reason they knew that what she had said was a bad word was because they’d very obnoxiously looked up as many french curse words as they could think of, because they knew asking her would've probably lead to them not being able to sit for a week. Once, when their father had been helping with dinner, he’d murmured a quiet “shit" after he cut himself, and their tiny gentle-as-a-spring-breeze mother, had reached up-quite a distance, he was tall and she was short- and nearly twisted his ear clean off. Needless to say, there was no cursing in the Becket household…at least not when Mom was within earshot.

The family had sat in the living room for hours, staring at the seemingly endless footage from various angles of the monster as it destroyed everything in its wake. It wasn't until their mother started coughing-something that had been happening more and more often lately- that their father declared that there was nothing they could do but go to bed and pray.

Later that night a nightmare of the same monster devouring their mother chased Raleigh into his big brother’s bed, something he hadn't done in years, with tears on his cheeks. His bother merely grumbled quietly and lifted the blanket in invitation, and Raleigh hadn't needed to be told twice. 

The next day, their mother had steadfastly refused to let them turn on the news, letting them play video games the entire day, an unheard of occurrence until then, and something the boys pounced on with enthusiasm. Though, the fact that they played a few games that involved fighting monsters put a frown on her normally smiling face, but she said nothing.   
They went to school on Monday, where the monster thing was of course endlessly discussed and analysed by hundreds of teenaged minds, but other than that, nothing really changed. Until Thursday night when they came home from a friend’s house to find both parents glued to the TV, watching as the monster was finally taken out by a blinding light in Oakland, and something stirred in Raleigh’s memory.

“Hey Mom, ain’t that near where we used to live?”, he had asked, lightly tugging on her skirt from where he was perched on the floor, his back against her legs and his head resting on her knees, looking at her upside down, his default position as the baby of the family and her favourite-suck it Yance. At first, he’d figured that the strange look on her face was because he was seeing her from a weird angle, but when she’d answered him in a clipped tone with a short “Yes” and nothing else, he’d known something was up. He’d turned to face her, a frown on his face. 

“Mom?” he’d tried again, but then his father had gotten up and announced rather loudly that they were going out for dinner since Mom had neglected to feed them all, shooting a flirty wink her way, eliciting gagging sounds from his sons and a blush from her even after nearly twenty years of marriage. All thoughts of past living arrangements were forgotten and soon the family piled into the family car in search of dinner. Raleigh had wanted pizza, and he’d been sure Yancy was only requesting burgers to be an ass, but he played the “I'm gonna be out of the house soon” card that never failed to get his mom teary-eyed and their father smiling proudly and so a burger is what he'd ended up having instead.

Life in the Becket household went on. Raleigh was looking on with no small amount of anxiety as his family collectively prepared themselves to send Yancy off into the wide world. For as long as he could remember, him and his brother had been attached at the hip. They shared everything, from clothes to food. They had the same room, bunkbeds against one wall and two small desks against the opposite. He can still remember how devastated he had been when his brother had had to start the first grade, his memory glosses over the three years where they had been separated daily by this evil thing called school, and how his memory suddenly picks up on the day he got to join Yancy when he started first grade himself. The same thing happened for middle school and high school, with gaps in his memory like life wasn't worth remembering if Yancy wasn't there very step of the way. He remember the ribbing he’d gotten from the other boys in high school because Yancy hadn't refused to let his little brother join them at the lunch table, and how eventually Yancy told them all they could go fuck themselves. He thinks their closeness freaked the other kids out a bit, which was probably why it always felt like it was the Becket Boys against the world.

And then, his anxiety and everything else, including sea monsters, was blown out of the water when his mom came home one day from the doctor and gathered them all around the dining table, where she proceeded to completely upend the world as they knew it with what she had to say.

Lung cancer. Inoperable and too late to treat with chemo. Optimistically, the doctors gave her six months.

Turns out a an optimistic six months was doctor-speak for two months and a little bit, because she died a week before Yancy’s birthday. And on Yancy’s birthday, they buried their mother. The next day, their father was nowhere to be found. His clothes and necessities were gone, and there was a wad of cash on the dining room table.

That night Raleigh found himself on the top bunk with his big brother once again, only this time it was the nightmare he was living that put him there. He cried as his brother held him, and felt his brothers tears wetting the side of his head.

They spent that year’s holiday season with only each other for company, but Raleigh found that it wasn't so bad. His brother had spent years with their mom in the kitchen, so they weren't drowning at the deep end, but keeping afloat as best the could. Early in the New Year, they had their first argument since their mother died and their father left. Yancy wanted to get a job instead of going to college in order to take care of Raleigh, and Raleigh kept responding to that ridiculous idea with a firm "Over my dead fucking body”. The ban on cursing had died with their mother, and he found himself cursing like a well educated french sailor. The argument only ended when they were interrupted one day by a knock in the front door. It was the family lawyer.

According to their mother’s will, the house and everything in it had been in her name, and she had left everything to them. So they found a compromise. They sold the house, packed up and went to college. Or Yancy went to college while Raleigh went to the high school closest to campus(which just happened to be most prestigious private schools in Alaska).

Turns out that going to school was kind of redundant for both of them, since they ended up dropping out of their respective educational institutes anyway. They had a unique skill to get them through life, one born on a kindergarten playground and honed to sharp precision on the battlefield that is public school. 

Who needs a degree in civil engineering or even a high school diploma when you can be a Jaeger Pilot instead.


	3. Yancy, June 10th, 2016.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How the Brothers Becket came to leave their shitty little apartment in Anchorage, Alaska.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually a re-write of chapter 3 because I was NOT happy with the previous one. It's also way longer so...yeah. Kick me if you see anything funky or whatever, or even if you just wanna. I'll be the last person to judge random violent impulses trust me. Also thanks for reading!

The guys up front are hot.

Yancy is not the guy that all straight men fear, the gay one who hits on everything with a dick and good hair(does that person even exist?). He’s actually found that he’s attracted to very few people and only classifies himself as gay because those select few have all been men and it had nothing to do with their looks. Well…almost nothing.

So, its relatively safe to say that when he finds himself squirming in his seat and stress-swallowing drool at the mere sight of two random twin brothers, he's bewildered at the least. They hand out pamphlets before they say anything, his hand brushes against the hand of the twin handing him his an he wants to squeal like a twelve-year-old at a Directional Bieber concert but somehow manages to hold onto his dignity.

They start talking, those matching baritones wash over him and he almost melts into a pile of goo underneath his chair. They introduce themselves as Bruce and Trevin Gage, they’re twins. Six feet tall, non-assholish brown buzz-cuts, mannerisms that scream military and- oh yeah, they’re Jaeger pilots. They’re here at The University Of Anchorage representing the PPDC, recruiting not only techs and lab-rats as candidates for the Academy on Kodiak island, but also pilots.

When he walked into his Construction Liability and Contracts class, the last one for the day, and saw the lack of lecturer behind the podium, he was, like everyone else, making obscene noises at the thought of two hours of napping instead of his brain imploding within the first few minutes because its fatally boring but also complicated as fuck. Now, he’s not napping, but he’s still wants to thank whoever up there finally decided to cut him a break. A break with Jaegers. And hot men piloting those Jaegers. Hot men possibly teaching him how to pilot those Jaegers.

A guy could dream…

-8§8-

He gets home early because the presentation was shorter than the scheduled class and thinks he might just spoil himself and his little brother with one of the family’s secret recipes. He has chopped most of the veggies and has the meat defrosting in the steamer when his brother bursts in the front door, dropping his book bag on the floor with a disdainful thump, hanging his jacket up on the hook next to Yancy’s and traipsing down the hall with that ridiculous hip-swinging swagger of his. Its a relatively new thing, Yancy has no idea where it came from, suspects that its still in the initial stages of maturation and that someday it might just be perfect and have girls screaming their heads off, but for now, it just looks like his beloved baby brother shat his pants.

Raleigh finally steps into the kitchen(The Swagger takes time) and takes in the sight of his big brother in an apron, the various raw ingredients haphazardly spread throughout their tiny kitchen, and gets a loopy expression on his face. There’s a blob of blue paint on his right cheek and he has a streak of what looks to be yellow chalk on his chin. He’s wearing one of Yancy’s sweaters(the green one with the hood that he says makes him feel like a Slytherin), faded dark blue skinny-jeans(kids these days) and the usual black billy boots.  
“What’re you making, Yance? We celebrating something?”  
  
“Lamb chops”, he points to the little plastic box that held all of the Lappiere family recipes, passed down for three generations and doesn’t answer the second question. Raleigh makes a happy sound(something between a purr an a chirp) and shuffles around their scarred kitchen table to latch onto him in a tight hug.

“Did you skip your last class, the contracts and law thing, if I remember correctly, just to make your baby bro some lamb chops?” He lets go of Yancy when the elder remains silent and sinks into the closest kitchen chair, his face more serious. “Yance? What’s wrong?”  
The big brother sighs and puts down the knife(he was starting to make a mess of that carrot anyway) and leans against the counter to gather his thoughts.

Despite the fact that he spent most of that presentation with his mind in the gutter, his brain was miraculously able to pick up some information. Like the fact that they could sign up as a pair, which makes their odds of getting chosen higher since they won’t have to look for partners, after being scanned to see if their brains were drift-capable. They’d still have to get some basic training first since there seems to be some sort of elaborate hand-to-hand combat technique required to determine physical compatibility. He looks over at his brother, who has only recently started leaving the ‘I-am-a-noodle-with-arms-legs-and-a-dick’-phase, whose shoulders are gradually broadening from lifting heavy crates at the hardware store he works at on weekends, who’s just a tiny bit shorter than he is but is still growing like a weed and who likes going for a run every morning while Yancy is still ignoring his alarm. He looks around at their shitty little kitchen wedged into their tiny apartment with no TV, one bathroom with no tub and a broken toilet, the fourth-hand furniture that’s threadbare and kept together with duct-tape and prayers and the peeling paint on the roof. He thinks about the massive salaries that pilots earn, and that they have free healthcare and free food. He thinks about how fast Rals is growing, how even Yancy’s sweater is a bit short on him and how the fact that his jeans stop above his ankles are hidden by his boots. He thinks about how this idea just feels right.

He also thinks about the fact that he’s gay and his brother has no idea. He thinks about the fact that there’s no way he’ll be able to hide that from his little brother if they go forward with this, how he might just end up losing the one thing that’s gotten him up in the mornings. He thinks about the ugly resentment he feels on the rare occasions when he’s alone and Raleigh-free, when he reflects on his life and realises that barely anything is purely his, almost everything he is can somehow be linked to Raleigh. He had one secret that was his alone. He had wanted to tell his family of his homosexuality when he initially figured it out at the age of fifteen, but then shit happened. After that, he was too afraid to tell his brother without their mom there to soften the blow like she always did. Instead it became an iron ball that he had a love-hate relationship with. On the one side, it was the only thing that he didn't have to share, on the other, it could destroy their relationship.

Either way, it weighed him down and chaffed at his skin. But the rest of the time it was a small, nearly insignificant thought in the back of his head, less like a ball-and-chain and more like having a tiny pebble in your shoe that annoys the fuck out of you, but isn't important enough in the grand scheme of things to stop what you’re doing and shake it out.

Is he willing to risk it? After all, there might be a chance that Raleigh won’t hate him and that it could end up as nothing more than an afterthought. He carefully measures everything in his head, deliberating pros and cons, weighing the odds. They could end up as rich jaeger pilots risking their lives for the greater good, or they could end up in separate places during the next attack, Yancy not knowing if his little brother is alive but too scared to call because his brother hates him.

He makes his decision and takes the PPDC pamphlet out of his pocket, where he stuffed it after they were dismissed by the Gages, and places it in front of Raleigh, who has started bouncing his knee like he always does when he’s impatient with Yancy but doesn't want to rush him. The kid frowns and picks it up, glances at the PPDC logo and the word ‘Recruitment’ before he looks back up, face carefully expressionless.  
  
“You gonna enlist?”

“No, kid, we’re gonna enlist. Together. The first trials are on Saturday at the campus’ conference hall…if you show up with a partner they can do testing right there to see if we can even do it and to see if we might be compatible, ‘cause there’s no way to know for sure before they stick us in the thing…” He’s nervous. Knows Raleigh can tell he’s nervous, because he doesn’t normally prattle on about stuff and because the kid just knows him, better than he knows himself at times(except that one thing, as always). Before then there had been no mention of Jaegers and what not, except when there had been a recent attack, but on those occasions it was all anyone could talk about anyway. The only thing he knew for sure was that his brother seemed to favour Romeo Blue and Lucky Seven, but again, that was unsurprising since those seemed to be the most active Jaegers. For the first time in his life, Yancy comes to the jarring realisation that he has no idea how his brother is going to react, and the sudden uncertainty is so bizarre it almost knocks him off his feet.

Raleigh seems to be deep in thought, which basically just meant he looked constipated(he could also actually be constipated, they’d been eating a lot of junk food this week), making Yancy sweat increasingly large bullets. After a few minutes, his eyes finally met Yancy’s nervously shifting ones.  
  
“You think we’ve got a chance?”

Alas, there seemed to be hope. Bitter, gay-tainted hope. “We won’t know unless we give it a shot. It’s worth a try, kiddo.” Or worth our relationship. He can’t keep the pleading tone from his voice and hopes that Raleigh won’t pounce on it like he usually does.

“Well…I guess being a Pilot would be pretty awesome.” He gets up and smiles that lazy, wise-ass grin specifically designed in the third grade for ribbing his big brother, “That is, if they’ll let you in with your walker, Old Man.”

Raleigh dances away, still not quite fast enough to dodge Yancy’s skilled fingers, and the next thing he knows, he's in a headlock having a bald spot knuckled into the top of his head.  
  
“Oh yeah? You think they’ll look past your diapers, Kid?”

The tussling continues until eventually Raleigh taps out, grumbling good-naturedly about big brothers and their bullying ways. He’s on his way out of the kitchen, presumably to do homework, when Yancy spots flecks of dried paint and chalk on his hand and remembers the initial question that popped into his head with the kid’s arrival that he forgot to voice.  
“Any reason you’re covered in art supplies?”

Rals looks shifty for a second before sighing, grin back in place. “Math teacher wasn’t in today so I ditched to sit with the art kids. They got…enthusiastic about using me as a model.” He strikes a ridiculous pose as if to prove his point, winking at Yancy like a moron. “Guess I can’t help looking like god’s gift to art students, unlike certain-”, he makes a very satisfying squawking noise when a dirty dish-cloth hits him square in the mouth.

“Yeah, I’m sure you look just like any brilliant Picasso painting.” Unlike Rals, who actually seemed to find that shit interesting, Picasso was the only artist Yancy knew, and he found that the few things he’s seen by the guy gave him a headache pretty fast.  
  
He turns back to chopping veggies and doesn't even react when the dishcloth makes a damp slapping sound against the back of his head.

-8§8-

There must be two-hundred people here.

To say the conference hall is crowded would be like saying the Kaiju are a tiny bit of a problem. Most of the massive room is screened off into little cubicles, and the actual trials and testing and what-have-you seem to be taking place inside them. Anyone who isn't performing a test or being tested is either being systematically divided into groups to wait outside each cubicle or is doing the systematic dividing of visibly hopeful individuals.

Yancy finds himself fidgeting nervously just like his brother for once, seated in a row of chairs outside one of the cubicles, though he's trying his best to hide it by folding his hands and resting his elbows on his knees to keep them still.

They’d arrived and barely made it three steps inside the door when they’d been intercepted by a stern-looking lady in full PPDC uniform(what all of the herders seemed to be wearing), which consisted of court-heels, stockings, a pencil skirt, a blindingly white button blouse with the logo pinned to each lapel and a dainty little hat(again with the logo, why don’t they just make their employees get it tattooed on their foreheads) perched just above the pristine brunette bun at the back of her head. Rals had immediately flashed her his cougar-magnet grin(the one that made Yancy worried for his little brother’s virtue), and she could be credited for keeping a straight-face even through her blush as she indicated that they follow her to a cubicle. Once they’d been seated, she’d handed them each a clip-board with a form attached that required their basic information, and then marched off in a flurry of clicking heels and Yancy had been left with a pouting little brother.

Next to him, the kid is all energy as per usual. He’s bouncing his knee, touching his thumb to the tip of each finger on both hands and he’s cracked his neck at least four times in the last fifteen minutes. The loud cracking sounds has turned more than one head, and Yancy is ready to just grab the kid’s head and keep it in an indefinite headlock. He’s done it before, during one disastrous church visit when their mom was feeling particularly stressed about their position in the afterlife, and when they’d been camped in a waiting room when Mom was sick. He’s not very fond of either memory. He takes a deep breath and kind of ironically prays that what is about to happen doesn't end up being another memory he buries but can’t ignore.

They both jump a little when the screen with wheels that serves as their cubicle’s door is suddenly shoved aside with a screech, and out stumbles two very nauseous looking girls. They seem very focused on not looking at each other or making any type of physical contact. He recognises them from some of his classes. They always sit together, always seem to be touching or silently communicating, basically being the poster-girls for those people who come in pairs, the ones that look nothing alike but are practically identical in every other way. He’s never seen them acting like this before, barely acknowledging the other and apparently deliberately ignorant of each other.

The girls barely get three steps out of the cubicle before Ms. PPDC reappears out of thin air to firmly escort them away with an insincere look of sympathy half-assedly plastered on her face.

With their departure he feels the first horribly familiar sting of fear shoot through him, just like the day Trespasser roared all of its hate from their television speakers, and again when their Mom came home and dropped the C-bomb on their kitchen table, or the countless times after that, when his life became a series of proverbial gut-punches. From experience, he knows that soon his fingers will go slightly numb, he’ll be able to tell his heart-rate just by listening to the rhythmic rushing of blood in his ears and he won’t be able to take his eyes off his little brother for more than a few seconds, an instinct born the day his mother came through the front door shortly after his third birthday, holding a quiet little blue bundle in her arms, despite the fact that earlier that same day, his father had come home to tell him that the little brother he had been hoping to meet wouldn't be making an appearance.  
Since that day, him and Rals hadn't encountered anything new without presenting a united front. Playground, bullies, homework, disciplinary action from their parents, hell, even breakfast. They had faced it all together.

Yancy swallowed back bile. Would this be what finally broke them? He doesn't think that he’d be able to stand that. His sexuality was a secret more to prevent that than any selfish need Yancy had have something all to himself for once.

He’s on the verge of jumping out of his chair, grabbing Rals and making a run for it when a short little redheaded lady in a lab coat pops out of the cubicle, holds out a hand for their filled in forms and gestures enthusiastically for them to come in.

“You boys must be brothers! That’s fantastic! The closer your bond, the better your chances are you know!” And the bigger the potential for catastrophe, Yancy thinks bitterly as he rises from his chair at a far more sedate pace than his hyperactive little brother, who is already beside Ms. Red. The cougar-magnet-grin makes a reappearance and he despairs for the fate of the supposedly-fairer sex. His brother was going to have a harem one day. That or he was going to rule the world, not with an iron fist, but with a fucking smile.

He follows them inside and drags the wheely-screen back into position when the other occupant of the cubicle, a burly dark-skinned man in blue scrubs(also with the logo, on the shoulder if you must know), indicates for him to do so. The tiny space is almost claustrophobic with two reclined-stretchers, each with a machine at the head that looks like a very elaborate version of the old-fashioned hair dryers that salons used to use. There are so many cables running across the floor and draped over everything that he feels a Picasso-headache coming on, and he’s grateful when Mr Logo Scrubs(the PPDC didn't seem to believe in name tags, so he was gonna make his own thank-you very much), after being handed one of the forms(Yancy assumes its his, since Ms. Red seems to have gotten dibs on his little brother) guides him to one of the stretchers. The most startling thing in the cubicle, however, is not the astounding amount of rubber-lined copper, or the torture chairs or even the brainwash machines. Nope. The thing that has Yancy’s stomach crawling across the floor towards freedom is the two fucking robotic arms suspended at shoulder(hehe)-length beside their stretchers, conveniently out of sight from where he was standing before.

His brother is sprawled across the chair closest to the entrance(Yancy notes distantly that it would be on his left once he finally got around to sitting down) like he does this every day, all charm and smiles with Ms. Red, but he’s having a solo thumb-war and the soles of his boots are making tap-tap sounds against the plastic beneath them so Yancy knows he’s not the only one who’s staining his mental briefs.

His actual briefs are endangered for a second when Mr. Logo Scrubs reveals a fucking Bane-voice right in his fucking ear. “If you would please sit down, Mr Becket?” He’s holding something that looks like the sci-fi version of a crown, with numerous wires running out of it in little clusters, all tied together in the back like a robot pony-tail. Yancy numbly sinks down onto the stretcher.

“This is gonna be measuring your brain waves. First we’ll be checking if you’re drift-capable, and then you’ll be hooked up together to see if you’re possibly drift-compatible.” he pauses, possibly for dramatic effect, the asshole, before continuing, “It’s very important that you guys remember, the successful completion of this test might guarantee your spot at the Academy, but in no way guarantees your spot in a Jaeger. This is a very basic test, so you might end up not even being drift-compatible after all. Only about ten percent of the world’s population is drift-capable, and not even half of that ten percent end up with a partner, so don’t get your hopes up.” The newly dubbed Mr. Bane-Voice is looking at them very carefully, scanning them from head to toe, paying particular attention, it seems, to their physique and apparent health and doing it casually like it might not even occur to him that he’s making them uncomfortable. Yancy supposes that its part of the job, can’t have sickly and underfed morons for pilots, can you?

He and Rals both nod without hesitation.

“Good. Please take off your shirts.”

Yancy sighs, accepting his fate. Raleigh almost rips his shirt in his haste to get it off.

Within minutes, they’re attached to excessive amounts of machinery(which included heart monitors, which wasn't terrifying at all) and blind because the hairdryer looking thing sinks down over their heads until only their chins are sticking out. Yancy takes a deep breath, a bit disconcerted when it puffs against his face on the exhale and wishes he’d thought to ask Raleigh for one of his ever-present pocket candies, because while his breath might not be narly, it isn't exactly spring flowers and fairy farts either. Ms. Red announces that they are about to start, her voice a bit faint due to their space-hats covering their ears, and that they will hear some humming noises but not to worry, this usually doesn't hurt.

Oh good. How reassuring. And here he was concerned that his brain might melt and start leaking out of his ears. How silly of him.

The humming starts, as do the heart monitor’s beeping, the space hat lights up with a soft blue, and he wants to reach over and hold Raleigh’s hand before his stomach crawls up his throat and chokes him. He relaxes a tiny bit when he feels familiar, slim fingers slipping into his, but only a very tiny bit. He takes a second to contemplate how he just knows its his brother's hand and not one of the attendants’, its not like they hold hands every day, but he realises that his brother’s hand hasn't changed much since the time when they were little and they held hands all the time; crossing the road, helping each other up onto the jungle-gym or into trees, when they were in large crowds and didn't want to lose each other, or when Raleigh just felt like it because he’d always been a little weird. It’s certainly bigger and longer for sure, but the general shape, what mom called piano-fingers, is still the same.

He sighs again, wrinkling his nose at his own breath, and tries to focus on the sound of the attendants’ movements over the humming, and then the beeping of the heart monitors, which are almost going at the same rate if not at the same exact time. Once again, he’s reassured that he and his brother are at least equally nervous. When that gets boring, he starts going over some of his favourite comics in his head, which leads to him wondering what Tony Stark would have made of their current situation. He’d probably bitching about the tech and how he could’ve done better, or flirting with Ms. Red, or possibly both.  
He’s neatly redesigning their whole cubicle when the humming stops and he hears an enquiring sound from his brother.

Mr. Bane-Voice deigns to speak, sounding almost surprised, “Judging by your scans, you boys should be drift-capable.”

Yancy’s stomach almost rebels again. “Should?”

“Well, there’s no way to know for sure short of slapping a real pons onto your heads, but Dr. Lightcap’s studies yielded at least a few markers for us to look out for that might indicate drift-capability and such…” Their chins must have looked especially clueless, because the talking stopped, but he got the gist of it. It was all an expansive(not to mention expensive) guessing game.

“Are you ready for the next test?” Ms. Red piped in.

Without waiting for their reply, Mr. Bane-Voice launches into an overly complicated and verbose explanation of what the next test entailed.

Basically, they were going to initiate a low-level drift that would only connect their motor-skills and some key parts of their brains, unlike a full neural link. Like dipping stepping in a puddle as opposed to being fully submerged. Goodie. Then, they would attempt to move the robotic arms, Raleigh the left and Yancy the right, using the corresponding hemispheres of their brains.

Bane-Voice picks up Yancy’s arm and proceeds to stick smaller versions of the sticky-pads on his chest to it. Yancy assumes each of the little things would then get connected to even more wires. A strange glove that feels like it’s lined with silicone is pulled over his hand, he cringes because it pulls on the little fine-hairs on his fingers. Obviously this glove does not take the fact that humans are mammals and thus hairy into consideration.  
Eventually, after instructing them to let go of each other’s hands, Red announces that they were ready as can be, and that the humming will start up again. Their brain waves during the test will be monitored as well for safety reasons as well as further study.

The soft blue light is back, as is the humming. His arm suddenly feels heavy, like its in a cast, and it tingles strangely, but he determinedly keeps it still, awaiting further instruction. He also feels the beginning of a headache, thrumming behind his left ear.

“Can you wiggle your fingers?” Bane-voice’s voice sounds from somewhere behind him.  
Yancy does his best, but it feels kind of like trying to move your fingers after just waking up, when your body is still relearning how to do stuff. Or that’s what waking up is like to Yancy, who sleeps more than is strictly necessary.

Red perks up with an excited little sound, so he guesses he was at least partially successful. “Try to touch your thumb to each of your other fingers, start with your index finger.” Another excited sound. Yancy’s stomach stops trying to rip through his abdominal muscles, like it’s hesitating so it can see what happens next.

“Can you feel this?” Mr Bane asks, corresponding a sudden weight on his right hand.  
Both he and Raleigh answer with a “Yes” at the the same time.

The sudden weight is echoed on his left hand, along with Red asking, “And this?” Yancy is a little confused, because there’s nothing on his left hand as far as he can feel, yet it feels like there is. It feels like he has two arms where his left one is, one ghost-arm weighed down by something, and one real, flesh-and-blood arm that’s just lying there. He decides to ask, because he’s not entirely sure he didn't sprout another arm while he wasn't looking and that has the beeping on his side suddenly speeding up.

“So I’ll feel it even if you’re only dragging my brother’s arm?”

“Yes,” Red sounds like a kid who just got handed some free ice-cream, “It's a two-way connection, remember? Everything your brother feels, you will feel, and vice-versa, even if only half your brain is connected. The left side of your brain controls the left side of your body, right? But both sides of your body have to be in sync, otherwise you would struggle with basic everyday things like walking or sitting. So, in a Jaeger, all of your movements have to be in sync, and not just your right or left side. And it seems like you boys could just make it!”

Raleigh apparently gets it before he does. “So we passed the test?!”  
  
The humming and beeping stops, and he’s blinded by the harsh fluorescent lights of the conference hall once again as the space hat is lifted. As soon as his vision is somewhat back in place, he looks over at Raleigh, who’s eyes are flitting between the attendants with startling speed.

Bane-voice is smiling rather smugly as he pulls sticky-pads from Yancy’s arm and chest, seemingly without a care as to the hair he’s removing along with them, and Red is doing the same to Raleigh, although her face is the very picture of remorse, as if pulling some invisible hair from his little brother is tantamount to poking a puppy with needles. Both of them stay resolutely silent until both the Beckets are sat up and dressed again.

Then, once he’s free of stickers, Red makes eye-contact with Rals and smiles blindingly. “Yes, Mr. Becket, it would seem you passed the first phase of testing.”

Before anyone starts jumping around and throwing streamers, Bane-Voice has to add his two cents. “The next phase of testing takes place here, same time next week. Wear clothes fit for exercising, because there will be a lot of strenuous activity.”

Raleigh launches himself from his stretcher like that statement was a challenge, picks up Red and spins her in a circle like he’s a badly paid actor in a romantic comedy, all the while grinning like he just got an Oscar. Naturally, she giggles and goes as red as her hair, slapping at his shoulders with the apparent force of a kitten in protest.

Yancy sighs, because he’s almost used to shit like this from his brother. He looks at Bane-Voice. “Anything I need to sign or something?” When all he gets is a headshake in return, he grabs onto his brother and forcibly drags him from the conference hall before he decides to flash his stupid smile at anyone important.

  
-8§8-

  
The next morning finds him being shaken awake at the ass-crack of dawn by his little brother, who somehow got it into his pretty little head that Yancy needs some exercise. At first he ignores him in the feeble hope that he’ll give up and go away, but then the little shit pulls a Freaky Friday on him by flipping up the blankets and tugging on his ankles.

Because they’re poor and Yancy doesn't have anything to grab onto but crappy sheets, he ends up on the floor underneath a pile of blankets and a now-ripped crappy sheet. He glares balefully at Raleigh, who just stands there in his torn-to-shit running shoes, sweats(Yancy’s) and a hoodie(also Yancy’s), grinning like they do this every day and like they don't live in fucking Alaska, where the risk of freezing your balls off isn't just a joke.  
“Never gonna get to Kodiak if you can’t get out of bed, Old Man!” He swaggers(read: waddles) out of the room, but not before grabbing Yancy’s blankets and leaving him in the cold.

Yancy pities his little brother’s future harem, he really does.

Eventually, he gives in(more like his brother drags him down the hall over the freezing tile, which prompts him into gracefully leaping to his feet with homicidal intent) and joins the morning run. When they get home, he comes to the almost physically painful realisation that they didn't really think about timing their run appropriately and that if he takes the first shower, his brother will be late for school and he won’t have any lunch. Buying lunch at school will throw out their whole budget, so he sighs, pushes his brother towards the bathroom and enters the kitchen.

When he does eventually get his ass defrosted in the shower, it occurs to him that on their run, he kept pace with his brother’s strides without even thinking about it, and that he didn't even have to ask which route to take, even though this is the first time they’ve gone out on a run together since he was in high school. He’s also happy to note that even though he stopped going for morning runs, he was still in good form. He supposes lugging around huge textbooks and running between classes to avoid being late was enough to compensate.

Something else occurs to him in the shower. If(and this was a ginormous if, confirmation of possible drift-compatibility or no) they get accepted into the Jaeger Program, it would mean having to drop out of college for him, and even worse, dropping out of high school for Raleigh. The terms and conditions in both the pamphlet and the form they signed prior to taking the test were very clear. As a minor, the only way Raleigh would get accepted would be if he was compatible with Yancy, an adult, and anything and everything they had to do at the academy and after would need Yancy’s approval(in writing, no less) as his legal guardian, and if this approval was not expressly given, he would be dropped from the program, but forced to either go into foster-care or stay wherever Yancy was stationed. Another thing the form required them to sign was an Indemnity form in which they basically had to say “Why yes, yes I am aware that I could die doing this, and no, I totally don't care and would never sue if I were to, say, have my brain fried by your freak-science.”, and it would have had Yancy laughing at Ms. PPDC like a madman whilst slowly backing out the door with his brother in tow, if it hadn't been for said brother giving him the infernal, thrice-cursed puppy-eyes.

Yancy bangs his head against the ugly tiled wall of their shower, pushes it all to the back of his mind where it will still keep nipping at his ass nonetheless and gets out of the rapidly cooling shower.

For the rest of the week, they keep up the routine.

Saturday morning, he wakes up later than usual(he never thought 6 am would become his new usual), and he’s disoriented for a second before the smell of french toast hits his nose. He hoists himself out of bed, keeping his thick goose-down duvet(one of the few things that came with them from their old home) wrapped around him, and makes his way into the kitchen. He pauses in the kitchen doorway, thinking about how similar this situation is to what happened more or less two weeks ago. Although, his brother has forgone the apron, recipe box(French toast is the only thing he can make,so he makes it often and he makes it well) and he doesn't seem to have a massive secret weighing on his shoulders. Yancy pulls up a chair and sits down, his brother turns around at the sound but merely grins at him and hands him a plate already stacked high with syrupy goodness.

“Here's your _toast_.”

He sighs. They’ve been over this. He decides he’ll bite, if only for the distraction from what they’re going to be doing today. “Its French Toast, Rals.”

“We're French. We call it toast.”

“Only half and its still French Toast.”

“They don’t call it French Toast in France!”

“Yeah, they don’t. They call it _Pain Erdu_ and we’re not currently speaking French.”

The kid wrinkles his nose, furrowing his brows in that way that is most certainly not adorable. “ _The lost bread_?”

“I looked it up. There’s some long story. I didn't bother reading the whole thing through.Thought I’d leave that to you.”

Raleigh grins. “Don't mind if I do.” He pauses for a bit, then in their mother tongue: “We should speak French more often. If only, ya know…for _Maman _.”__

____

He stops moving, stops breathing. Even after nearly three years, mention of their mother is like a punch to the solar plexus. He can’t think about their beautiful, sweet mother without thinking about their vile, piece-of-shit father. He hates the guy even more for poisoning the memory of their mother that way.

After a few seconds, he reboots and looks at his little brother, who looks so guilty and forlorn all of a sudden. That won’t do. Not today.

“There any bacon for this?”

Raleigh lights up like a glow bug. “Nah, figured you wouldn't appreciate it if I set the kitchen on fire-”

“-again!” They really pissed off the super last time.  
Raleigh simply snorts and flips his bread.

  
-8§8-

  
On 21 June 2016, after six gruelling hours of physical analysis of all kinds, the Brothers Becket are officially enlisted in the PPDC.

They are barely able to stand, leaning on each other and sweating so profusely that it is dripping audibly on the training matts beneath their feet when they receive the news from none other than the Gage Twins themselves.

The very next day finds them on a tiny (PPDC branded, of course)plane to Kodiak Island.

As he watches the roiling Pacific thirty thousand feet below them, Yancy can’t help but think that only yesterday, he was sitting in their shitty little kitchen and bantering with his little brother about toast, that it’s kind of sad that it only took them a few hours to pack up their entire lives. But he looks over at his little brother, who is now dressed in clothes that actually fit him(they decided to splurge when they got the security deposit back despite the burning incident), who is smiling from ear to ear and who is happily bouncing in his seat. Yancy thinks that its worth it, that where he calls home won’t ever matter as long as his brother is smiling like that.

Even if he doesn't get to see it because his brother might not want to share a home with faggot.

He clenches his jaw and goes back to watching the ocean.


	4. Raleigh, July 2016.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Becket's time at the academy.

** Raleigh. **

** July 2016. **

Their first trimester had been focused on getting them into shape.

This involved them being ripped from their warm, comfortable beds and tossed out onto the fucking tundra before the sun was even up, and running laps in the frozen track, until it finally made an appearance and hour later. Then it was breakfast, which was usually more protein than taste, and then classes. Three out of six of those a day.

During these first gruelling three months Raleigh actually slept through the night, every night, for the longest period of time in his life. The mornings were hell on Yancy at first, until about a month and a half in and he just powered through it, though it didn’t seem to get any easier. Raleigh felt a pang of sympathy for his big brother each morning when the barrack’s goddamn _foghorn_ blared and ejected every bleary-eyed cadet from their bunk. It was also a huge adjustment not to be able to talk to his brother everyday, since at the end of most days, in the two-hour window between dinner and lights-out they were both too exhausted to attempt any semblance of conversation. The only reprieve came on weekends, but those were mostly spent sleeping and decompressing by doing absolutely nothing.

The end of first trimester was marked by a week off from classes, strictly dedicated to studying, fitness sessions and sparring, and then a week of exams. This was also when about a third of their class dropped out or got kicked.

Raleigh had felt like he was ready to barf when they were waiting for their results, he’d never been so scared of failing in his life. When the results had finally arrived and he and Yancy were ranked in the top four pairs, he felt his legs go a little wobbly in surprise. Though he and Yancy had studied their asses of nearly every second of time they could spare, together and apart, he’d still half-expected not to make it. He and Yance were the youngest there, with no-one else below twenty-seven.

They’d had two weeks off in which to celebrate and recover. The academy helpfully shipped them to the mainland for the first week, where they all had rooms booked in a hotel in Anchorage, very conveniently located between a nightclub and a slightly quieter bar. They still had to do laps every day, but these were at least shifted to a more reasonable hour, when the possibility of freezing one’s balls off was a bit less likely.

It was only on the second night(the first having been spent in a dead sleep) there that Raleigh’s age actually caused any problems. The bouncer at the nightclub refused to let him in, and the bar only served alcohol and thus didn’t even acknowledge him. He was a little bummed, but didn’t want to make a big deal of it, and he had no intention of spoiling his brother’s night as well. Yancy, of course, refused to leave Raleigh alone in the hotel room like a kicked puppy, so they made their way a little ways down the street to an all-night diner, where they had milkshakes and massive cheeseburgers.

The next night, it got a bit trickier, since Yance had actually been invited by some of the other cadets this time. Raleigh finally managed to get his brother out of the room, brandishing a new book and yelling, “I wanna read without you breathing down my neck, old man!”. The night after that, same thing, except this time he only pretended that he hadn’t actually finished the book the night before when his insomnia had hit him square in the face, once again. He spent the fourth night lying in bed and letting his mind wander, and couldn’t help the occasional sting of resentment.

Yancy was twenty-one in three weeks and could drink and get away with it. Yancy was twenty-one in three weeks and taking to the program like a duck to water despite hating the early mornings. Yancy was twenty-one in three weeks and could talk to the other cadets without feeling completely inadequate.

Raleigh was eighteen and a little bit, alone in a random hotel room but for his thoughts and envy.

Raleigh was eighteen and a little bit, and sick of this shit. He got dressed, grabbed his key-card, some of the cash Yancy had left on the bed-stand for room service and went for a walk.

 

 

He ended up in the diner again, picked a stool at the breakfast bar and made eye-contact with the waitress at the register. She smiled at him as she dropped off a menu and he smiled right back, his spirits already lifted. She was pretty, with brown eyes, pink-streaked pigtails and a sway to her hips that glued his eyes to her ass when she walked away to put in his milkshake order.

A few minutes later she was back with his shake, grinning at him and maintaining eye-contact as she slowly, deliberately pressed not one, but two straws into the chocolate creamy goodness.

“Chocolate's my favourite too, so if you let me have some it’ll be on the house.” She leant down and fastened glossy lips around a straw and sipped, her eyes still on his.

Despite the growing tightness in his pants, he kept his cool and simply bit his lip and nodded. At least, he hoped it looked like he was keeping his cool, because his mind was racing with all sorts of scenarios that he knew were highly unlikely. He bent over his own straw and felt her breath on his face as he took his own sip.

A part of his mind that sounded like Yancy was mocking him at the sheer cheese of it all, sharing a milkshake with a girl all sweet-like in a fifty’s style diner.

When the milkshake was about a quarter gone, she drew back, that coy smile still in place. “You got a name?”

He drew back and licked his lips in a way that he prayed was sexy and not creepy, “It's Raleigh, and you are…” he let his eyes slip down a little to where her name-tag was pinned neatly to one rather impressive mound, “Naomi.” He grinned, the cheeky one he knew got the girls in art class back in school blushing. He dragged his eyes back up to hers to see she was arching an eyebrow, but still smiling.

She sipped from their drink again, “Where you from, Raleigh? I mean, besides Kodiak?” She’d raised her hand and was running a bright purple fingernail along the patch on his academy bomber jacket.

He felt a sudden rush of doubt. She was obviously familiar with the distinctive PPDC logo, as everyone was, but her confidence in assuming he was from he academy indicated to him that she’s seen and interacted with his ilk numerous times before. The desire that had been lazily building up swiftly turned to dismay.

He should’ve known it was just the patch on his jacket that drew her attention, but he kept up the conversation politely and tried not to let her catch on that the wool had been lifted from his eyes.

When the milkshake was finished and her smile just as sweet as it had been, he cleared is throat and fished out money for the shake from his pocket, plus some extra for a tip. He tried to be casual about putting it on the counter, but her face still dropped into a frown, then comprehension and finally not guilt, but disappointment. He would have felt a little guilty himself, since he was pretty sure it was rude to pay for it when she had offered it for free, but her apparent disregard for what he might feel about the situation firmed his mouth into a flat line. He simple nodded at her and left.

Drained yet still wide awake, he bought two mystery books from the convenience store out of desperation, though he was lucky enough that one of them had a WW2 vibe if the outline on the back was anything to go by.

Thus he spent the rest of their time in Anchorage sleeping, reading, doing laps in the mornings and otherwise only going out to eat with Yancy. His brother of course knew almost immediately that something was up, but seemed to chalk it up to the age gap issue. They still had dinner at the diner, but Raleigh kept his eyes resolutely forward and the gods seemed to give him a break since he didn’t see Naomi again, though the looks this garnered from his brother promised problems of another kind.

He felt better once they were back at the Academy, where they jumped into preparations for the second trimester. This one would be more focused on their abilities in the kwoon, and they would be having their first joint classes with the techs in the form of practicals with the controls and so on.

On the night of Yancy’s birthday the cadets were given free reign of the mess and no curfew, which was when they met and made fast friends with a Chinese-Peruvian guy named Tendo. He was hilarious and seemed to fall into sync with their dynamic seamlessly. He snuck them sips of whiskey from a water bottle with a PPDC logo on it, which made Yancy laugh long and loud before he was even tipsy. At the end of it, the ‘Brothers Becket’ as they were dubbed by Tendo, had to be helped to their bunks, and some genius tied Raleigh on his side and to the rails of his bunk so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit or take a nosedive.

That night was also when Raleigh started noticing something about his brother that in hindsight was actually quite obvious, or should have been to him anyway.

Wherever Tendo went, Yancy’s eyes followed and they weren’t exactly zoomed in on his rosary. His brother’s smile seemed more genuine when the tech was around, but he seemed to shy away from any contact of a more tactile nature. Whenever he sat with them for meals, Yancy seemed to make sure their elbows or knees never touched unless Tendo nudged or jabbed him deliberately to get his opinion or response to whatever joke was taking place at the time. Either his brother was so straight for Tendo in particular that touching him was beyond the boundaries of ‘no homo, bro’, or he was so gay for him that he feared any physical touch would project it to the room at large. Seeing as they were in a predominantly heterosexual male environment, Raleigh could respect that.

If there was anything about the situation that bothered him, it was Yancy not telling him. It made Raleigh reassess everything he’d said or done in his brother’s presence for as far back as he could remember. Had he ever come across as homophobic? It couldn’t be, since it would very much be the pot calling the kettle black. He’d never really sat down and had a hard think about his own sexuality, there had been no sudden angsty realisation in a high-school locker room or an epiphany centred right on some mildly attractive quarterback’s ass. He’d just known from the start that not only did he like boobs and curves, but he liked narrow hips and broad shoulders as well, not to mention just about everything in between. He ended up tying his mind in knots over their relationship; for all that they were apparently close enough to drift, it seemed they left a whole slew of things left unsaid. He was terrified that he might have done or said something to make his brother clam up about this, but also told himself that he’d never felt the need to have a in-depth discussion on the topic so his brother might have felt the same.

He decided that Yancy would tell him in his own time, but in any case, Raleigh would be a bit more open and talkative about his own preferences, in the hope that it would make Yancy see that there would be no judgment from him.

His own birthday came and went, and soon enough the end of their second trimester was nigh, and with it came some news that sent the cadets of class 2016 into a neat, well-mannered uproar. At least when the instructors were within earshot or sight. There were four Jaegers nearing completion; Australian, Chinese, American and Canadian. It certainly knocked up the general air of competitiveness up a few notches, with three American pilot-teams left including the Beckets. Additionally, they would all be wired up to a pons at the end of the exam week, as their final trial.

Raleigh was terrified. At night the barracks were rife with whispers, rumours and horror-stories of pilots who had chased the rabbit and just never resurfaced, or who’s brains got scrambled, or who just couldn’t handle the surreal experience and booked it for the hills, never to return. One particularly chilling theory suggested that the PPDC had some underground bunker somewhere that looked like a psych ward from the 1800’s, with rows and rows of hospital beds, whereupon most of the class of 2015 was lying comatose due to some failed experiment with a pons system.

Yancy nearly busted a rib laughing at that one, but there was a trace of weariness in his eyes all the same. Raleigh suspected Yancy was less afraid of getting his brain cooked and more afraid of sharing his head with someone else, even if it was with his little brother.

But Raleigh didn’t really have time to worry about that too much. Every waking moment was spent reading other pilot’s account of drifting, sparring in the kwoon, or watching videos of kwoon sessions between some of the senior Jaeger pilots.

There were videos of the Gages, with their neat mixed martial arts, very coordinated, like a dance, made even more eye-boggling by their identical looks. Then there were videos of the Hansens, something the instructors called ‘combative improvisation’, and everyone else called ‘back-alley brawling with sticks’. Those were his favourites, though there were quite a few more from the Kaidanovsky’s and even the marshall and his co-pilot Tamsin Sevier.

The Hansens though, they fascinated him. Hercules had at least some trace of formal training, probably picked up from his time on the ground in Afghanistan before he switched to airforce, but Scott was entirely a wild card. He didn’t seem to have any training beyond years of having to watch his own back, but his reflexes and ability to pick up on his opponent’s motives were superb. That, and he probably knew his brother’s movements just as well as his own. When matched up with other pilots, his fighting seemed erratic, slightly off centre, though he almost always managed to come out on top. Hercules was the opposite, where he got the drop on his opponents pretty easily. They didn’t seem like they would work well together, until they were out on the mats, moving perfectly in sync, almost flowing through and around each other.

When Raleigh and his brother did their kwoon trials, it was hard at first. Neither of them were used to moving in such a way, having only picked up the training in a few short, highly concentrated months. Eventually, however, they fell into a rhythm where he felt like they were nearing that perfect synchronicity. Each bout would last longer and longer without either of them scoring, until eventually they could go on and on without racking up any points. He could tell they were impressing their instructors, but he knew nobody would deign to give them any real acknowledgment until they could hold a drift.

**January 16th, 2017.**

“Initiating neural handshake in ten…”

He risked one last look over at his brother as the tech counted down the seconds, and his brother was staring straight ahead. Raleigh shook himself and did the same, taking a deep breath to still his heart rattling around in his chest.

“…four…three…two…”

It was like a plunge. He was reminded of one time when he and Yancy went fishing with their father out on the ocean and it hadn’t been an optimal day for it but their father had persisted. The waves had been gentle, rolling things but huge, so that when their boat crested it, it dropped like a stone. He hand’t gotten sea-sick, but every time they dropped, his stomach had shot up into the top of his skull and he’d sounded like a mud-stuck moose every single time.

The drift, that first, whip-quick dive into it was not unlike that feeling, but it all happened in his head. Though he’d known to prepare for the rush of memories, it was still a jolt to relive things that he’d thought long-forgotten as if it was happening again. Their joint memories nearly had them chasing the rabbit, but they seemed to both jerk into the present at the same time and somehow latching onto each other.

Once they were both present enough to respond to the tech, they ran through the checks, calibrating left and right hemispheres. They were in a simulation-pod, which was basically the head of a Jeager perched on some scary-looking machinery that could tilt and rotate it, or in some cases, again like that boat trip from long ago, drop and shoot up several feet at the twitch of a shoulder. The Academy had three of them in a large building at the edge of the campus, all facing the massive windows overlooking a sheer drop and the vast Pacific Ocean, a thing that was still so gorgeous despite what lurked beneath.

For now, they were simply getting acquainted with the controls, and they would not be running and simulations until the third trimester. Their scores in the finals and the drift tests would determine how much time they would be allocated to practise in the sim-pods.

It was only once the tech was running them through the extraction that Raleigh realised they’d done it, really drifted. A grin plastered itself to his face and his hands shook when he disconnected the myriad of cables connected to the circuit suit after being given the green light to do so. As soon as he was free, he glomped onto his brother like a limpet, both because he was so utterly happy and because there was that hollow ache he got in his chest whenever he felt like he needed a hug so bad he’d die without one. Yancy still had the rigging attached to him and was balanced on the foot harnesses, but he wrapped his arms around his little brother all the same.

They detached when the door opened and a tech popped in a head, nodding at them as if he was expecting them to be hugging it out. Raleigh helped his brother get out of the rigging and they stepped out of the pod, Yancy’s arm slung over his shoulders. They step out of the pod and wait for the verdict, just like every team that had gone before them. The tech standing there was making notations on a techpad, and they waited with bated breath even though they knew, were absolutely certain that it had been a success.

The tech finally looked up and them, and smiled. “Congratulations, Beckets. Not only have you passed with flying colours, but you nearly broke the Gages’ alignment record. You may proceed to the next trimester.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no excuses for how long this took. Spot any mistakes, lemme know.


	5. Jax, November 2016.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Life and Times of Jax, the Prospect.

A prospect nearly through with his one-year sentence as such(and an avid if somewhat secret comic fan), Jax Teller was reasonably sure that there was no mess out there that could faze him anymore, be it greasy, lazarus-pit-acidy, shitty, cummy or bloody. 

Which is why he was rather surprised when his brunch nearly made a great escape via his oesophagus at the sight of a deer perched ass-up through the wind-shield of an unfortunate B'mer being towed onto the lot by Opie and Chibs. 

He dropped the rag he’d been using to unnecessarily polish all the tools in the shop as per Tig’s orders and made his way over to the unfortunate spectacle. “Some days you’re the B’mer, some days you’re the goddamn deer.” He nodded at Ope exiting the cab of the truck, “Should I even ask?”

Ope had his mouth open to explain when Chibs piped in, “Some yuppie creamed it up at the streams!”. He grinned like a lunatic whilst strutting towards them, like a mutilated deer was the light of his life.

It was too early in the morning for this.

Jax shook his head, “How the fuck am I gonna get it out of there?”, because of course, as prospects, he and Ope were the club’s glorified clean-up boys, and the pickup itself had supposedly been the short end of the stick, but now Jax was rethinking his earlier position as it meant he would have to be the one to take care of this shit.

The club’s resident pro in all things nasty chose that moment to pop up right beside his shoulder, casually shoving a chainsaw into his hands like it was an empty pack of marlboros, “Just pretend its carve-your-own-steak night at Sizzlers, Man. It’ll be fun.” He eyed the deer and whistled, “Did he run into it or did he hit a tree while it was giving him head?”

Chibs guffawed and Ope grunted in disgust, his usual taciturn reply. Jax, who earlier that week had finished a book called The Jungle jokingly recommended by his girl, Tara, suddenly had a vivid image of Tig chowing down on roadkill flash through his mind, and his brunch nearly made a second encore. The extra details that his overactive imagination and sadly large store of memories involving a naked Tig added in didn’t help much to keep the vomit at bay.

He heaved a great sigh, swallowed the bile collecting at the back of his throat, started up the chainsaw and went to town on a deer’s ass.

 

Half an hour later, when he’d separated the hindquarters and was trying to detangle the antlers from the gear-shift, his dad, Big Otto and Bobby came roaring onto the lot. 

Halfway through the one leg he’d figured out that he’d need some gear other than a lone chainsaw, because within seconds he was covered in bits of fur, bone and whatever else. So now he looked like some sort of space butcher with coveralls, a bandana over his nose and mouth, some welding goggles and rubber gloves. He watched the new arrivals appraise his situation with chuckles and exclamations of revulsion, his dad in particular just shaking his head with a rueful smile.

Tig, who up until that moment had been reclining on a chair dragged from the office, watching Jax’s misery with relish, jumped up at his dad’s gesture and met them halfway. 

Jax continued with his task, but kept half and eye on the gathering a few feet away from him, noting how Tig suddenly filled with a manic energy, the type that usually had croweaters steering clear of those crazy-eyes of his. His dad, on the other hand seemed exhausted, more even than usual. Perpetually bone-tired seemed to be the default for him these days. He tried to hide it and seem his normal charming self for the boys, but even they could see that it was a losing battle. It, along with some other things, had become something of an elephant in every room of the clubhouse. They were all just getting comfortable on the bench by the clubhouse-entrance when one of those ‘other things’ drove onto the lot with the typical screeching of tires, rather reminiscent of their owner. Gemma Teller threw her long and voluptuous frame from her car and beelined it for her unwilling husband, her heels practically chipping away at the cement. Tig, Bobby and Otto saw fit to make themselves scarce, disappearing into the clubhouse with nary a backward glance. Like the bags under JT’s eyes, what was about to take place had become just as commonplace, and something they’d learned to ignore or else. 

 

In the three years since her affair with Clay had exploded all over the inside of the clubhouse and its occupants, her husband had made it his permanent residence with her son following shortly after, said son had stopped regarding her with anything other than disdain and distrust, and his father had filed for a divorce. Receiving those papers from a straight-faced Rosen had certainly knocked the breath out of her chest, but Gemma can’t say she was surprised, especially knowing about a certain Irish whore across the sea. What had really floored Gemma had been the day when she’d walked into her son’s bedroom with a laundry basket on her hip, only to drop it when met with empty closets and most of his little personal touches(the american flag, the pictures of him and Thomas, several posters of naked skanks draped over Harley’s, comic books and novels and videogames) completely removed from the room. She’d gotten her ass on the lot and in front of her husband faster than Tig could say ‘dollface’, hands on her hips and a snarl on her lips. That altercation had ended with a firm dismissal from her son, and a great big black hole in her dignity. 

But she didn’t give up. Since it was too late for a custody trial, (given that he was old enough to choose staying with his father over staying with her, she chose not to pursue that avenue since she wasn’t sure she’d be able to handle seeing her son’s final rejection on black and white and court mandated), she’d held onto her job at Teller-Morrow with ferocity and acrylic fingernails sunk deep, just for the sake of being able to see her son every day. She tried not to let his cold demeanour get to her, but she could practically feel her heart flagging bit by bit, day by day. But let it not be said that Gemma was a weak-willed woman, for that heart was being swiftly replaced with hate. At her husband. She was not only delaying the divorce settlement every which way, but she was also looking to bleed him dry. 

Her days had become a bitter litany of haggling with divorce lawyers, stand-offish attitudes from croweaters and sweetbutts alike(after all, she might have been a disgraced former old lady but like hell was she going to let them treat her like one), befuddled looks and strictly garage-related enquiries from all the sons(most of them didn’t know what to make of her anymore), impassive resignation from her husband and straight-up resentment from her son. There were bright spots, sure. Like the year before in December when Jax had finally gotten his Sponsor for Prospect in Tig, of all people. He’d been so happy that day, his smile had every single female on the lot practically swooning, her included, for he’d deigned to flash it briefly in her direction. The pride that had welled up in her chest at seeing him with his prospect cutte had been enough to tide her over this entire year.

Just then though, Gemma was fresh from a session with JT’s asshole lawyer, and was thus gearing up to rip her husband several new ones. During the meeting she was told that there was nothing left to delay, and that JT was giving her everything anyway. The house, the cars, hell, even half of his shares in Teller-Morrow and some of what he had in Unser Trucking. The only things she wasn’t getting was his Harley, which she wasn’t stupid enough to even ask for, nevermind demand in a divorce settlement.  
She came to a stop in front of him and couldn't help the sneer that formed on her face. His spine might have been relaxed and his face expressionless, the picture of nonchalance, but she’d known him long and well enough to see the capitulation in his eyes. The lack of any visible anger or even frustration made hers run hotter, she wanted a rise out of him, anything that would prove to her that she hadn’t wasted her life on a limp-dicked little pussy. 

She’d once loved him dearly; he was free-spirited, intelligent and introspective, on top of being the biker that appealed to her rebellious nature, a great lay that, well, appealed to everything really, and a writer that appealed to her inner romantic. To her young mind, his complexity has been just what she needed, but over the years and with Thomas’s loss, she’d come to hate that part of him. The way he preferred typing hippy gibberish on that typewriter that she’d gotten him instead of talking to her, instead of being the man she needed when she needed him most, and right now it had her seething. She took a breath and charged onward, “That piece of shit lawyer you got just told me that you’re giving up. Just like that! Is that how you take care of business now, John Teller? You just roll over?!” Somewhere, in the haze of red that was her mind, Gemma knew that this wasn't the time and place to have this argument, and that she would be regretting it soon.

John let out a world-weary sigh that had Gemma contemplating if she could get away with strangling him. “I'm tired, Gemma. You’ve been dragging this out long enough. Do us both and our son a favour and accept that it’s over.” He crossed his arms, posture going defensive. He was expecting a fight.

He was gonna get one. “Fine. I’ll sign those goddamn papers, if only so I don’t have to be married to such dickless little boy anymore!! And if you think for one second that I’ll be leaving without my son, you really are a fucking moron.” She froze. She’d crossed the line. It was an empty threat, and they both knew it, but in her rage it had slipped past her lips without her permission and it could not be unsaid. Jax would be eighteen in little over a month and there was no way in hell he would leave the club so close to finishing his year as a prospect. But even an empty threat concerning Jax was the proverbial lit match to a fuel tank. 

The words were barely out of her mouth and JT was already out of his seat and looming over her, his eyes alight with the anger, the fury that she had been anticipating for years now, but was still shocked to see. In all their years together, he’d never, not once, acted in a threatening manner towards her. Not upon finding out about her affair with his best friend, not when she slapped him upon finding out about his own with Maureen Ashby, twice, not even when she pushed over his Knucklehead with her car during an argument. And now it sent a shiver down her spine. It was one thing to call your biker husband a witless pussy when you were alone at home with nobody to witness it, but quite another to yell it at the top your lungs in front of not only his employees and brothers, but his son as well. She’d been dimly aware that he, Jax, would be here -where else-, but that knowledge, just like her self-control, had gone straight down the crapper the second JT’s lawyer had stopped talking. She could feel his eyes on her, feel his disgust at her display. For the first time since she’d had to say goodbye to her baby, Thomas, over three years ago, Gemma felt a touch of despair.

JT roughly grabbed her arm and dragged her into the clubhouse, past Tig, Otto and Bobby at the bar and into the Chapel. He threw her into one of the chairs, put his hands on the arm-rests and leant in close enough that she could feel his slightly ragged breaths on her face. “I don’t have to tell you how fucking stupid you just were, but I will tell you that if you ever, even think of taking my son away from me again,” he grabbed her jaw hard enough to bruise and she whimpered, "I will squeeze the life right out of you, and bury you deep. Then, I’m going to tell our son that you left, and that you will never come back to spill your fucking poison into his ears again. Understood?” He released her jaw so she could nod. “Go home, Gemma. Sign the papers and keep seeing your son everyday, regardless of how reluctant he may be, and stay out of my sight.” 

He stepped away from her and gestured at the door. She got up, charged through it and past all the not-so-subtly staring sons and out to her car. Only once seated behind the wheel, with her hands wrapped tight around it, did she let the shakes that had been threatening since JT stood up from the bench take over. Her breath came in ragged gasps and she held back tears only through sheer force of will, though her lip threatened to wobble clear off her face. It took nearly ten minutes, but eventually she felt like she wouldn’t fall apart any second, and only then did it occur to her to check if anyone had witnessed her moment of weakness.

There, leaning against the beat up B’mer and covered head to toe in blood, was her son. Despite the grizzly picture he no doubt knew he made, he calmly smoked his cigarette and stared at her, his face devoid of any expression.

That image, more than anything else that had happened to her that day, had her peeling out of the lot. That her son could regard her so cooly, as if she was nothing to him at all, coupled with the vivid imagery of what he would very likely become as a Son and as a man, shook her down to her very core. She couldn’t help but think that her son could very well end up an empty shell, all because she had seen hard times and poverty where his father had seen hope and freedom. But like she always did with these thoughts, she buried it deep and moved on.

If JT thought he could make their son into a peace-loving, outlaw philosopher with empty pockets, he had another thing coming. Gemma Teller was going to make a man of her son yet.

 

John watched her go and grunted, shaking off the aggression he thought he’d mastered. It seemed that every time he was ahead of the tide, every time he thought: “This is it, I can change things for the better now.”, something happened to throw him back under, kicking and sputtering for much needed air. His wife was an unstoppable force, relentless like waves beating at the shore. He used to love that about her, but now he was thinking that it would be his downfall. He was sure as hell not fooled into thinking this would be their last altercation. The day he heard the last of Gemma would be the day either one or both of them was dead.

He stepped into the main room where everyone was hardily pretending they hadn't noticed anything untoward just happening, and whistled a quick note to summon the attention of everyone that mattered and gestured with his head to the table to indicate an impromptu meeting. He went to go take his seat at the head of the table and then watched as Otto, Bobby, Piney, Chibs, Happy, Juice and then Tig filed in, the last having stashed everyone’s pre-pays in the cigar box on the pool table.

Everyone took their seats and their was a beat of silence before Piney launched right into it, “So what the hell happened?”.  
John inhaled, “The Mayans torched Blue Bird last night, and took all of the Niner’s merch. M-4’s, Glocks, all gone.” 

There was a collective exclamation of woe with a lot of choice words thrown in, and he gave them a second to wallow in dismay before he raised his hand for silence, which was again promptly broken by Piney, “Ain't the Niner’s already payed for that hardware? This shipment’s due tonight, Laroy get’s wind of this-”

“He already knows. I had Trammel set up a meet, the one I just came back from, to buy more time. Gave us until tomorrow morning. He’s got his own shipment of H coming in, so we have tonight to either pull a dozen M4’s together, or get our own back.” He made eye-contact with each man at the table. 

There was no doubt, they were out for blood now. John’s heart broke just a little. It seemed he would have to delay the Son’s withdrawal from violence even more, because if history was any indication, this little scuffle would not pass without blood spilt. Back in ’97, when he, Piney, Harry and Clay had first made their home in Charming, they had been immediately challenged by the Mayans, who claimed they had been encroaching on their territory. It had been a decision made in the midst of crisis to enter into business with the IRA, McGeavey’s prompting not exactly conducive to making an objective decision. They’d gotten their hands on what they needed to defend their families, and a bloody two years followed. John has been trying to think of ways to wrangle himself and the club out of that relationship ever since, but so far no opportunities had been viable. Especially since business opportunities as a whole had been scarce lately, what with the Kaiju threat rendering the entire Pacific practically a no-man’s-land for seafarers. Of course, the last three Kaiju had been taken care of by Jaegers, but almost nobody was willing to take that chance just yet. Almost nobody.  
The denizens of the underworld would normally not let anything get in the way of a profit, least of all giant alien sea-monsters, but the decrease in traffic across the ocean had made it harder for smugglers to to do their jobs and easier for border-patrols to do theirs. The IRA has had to put their price on hardware up twice, since bribing doc-masters on both ends had become something of an exorbitant expense. The Sons have had to do some clever combination of trickery and deceit in the past few years when their shipments had been either late or completely lost in order to avoid war. And that was just on the shore-front. The Kaiju hit in Mexico had made the cartels even more ruthless than before, and where their skirmishes had rarely crossed over the border, now it was all out war in some places on the US side of the border too. Oakland, where Trespasser’s bones lay memorialised, was a mess.  
Which is why they needed those guns back. The peace between the Niner’s, Mayans, Sons and what-have-you that had been kept in place by nothing but prayers and luck for three years now had been shattered. The Mayans had been chomping at the bit to get their hands on quality hardware even before the K-war, and now they were desperate enough to do something stupid like provoke not only the Sons but the Niner’s as well.

Tig slammed a fist onto the table with a growl, “Those fuckin’ wetbacks think they can shit on our livelihood, disrespect us this way?! No, Man, that shit ain’t gonna fly. I say we go over there and mow em’ all down, then take our guns back.”  
His statement was met with sounds of both approval and dissent.

Bobby cleared his throat loudly, “We go in guns blazing, it’ll be bloody ’97 all over again. We can’t afford a war right now, especially since we’re already one man short with Harry in Chino.”

Harry Winston was JT’s best friend and fellow veteran. They’d fought in the Gulf War in the early 90’s, and had been in the same Hawk providing air-support when it had gone down in the middle of the war-zone. They’d been trapped inside with debris and chunks of concrete blocking the doors, and both pilots had been dead. There’d been two other soldiers with them, but they’d succumbed to their injuries not long after the crash. They’d been stuck there for hours, with nothing to do but fiddle with the radio that kept spouting static, and talk. It was in that little bubble that the Sons Of Anarchy had been born. Harry was the son of a ‘Nam vet and had enlisted in a misguided sense of duty whilst JT had enlisted for lack of something better to do. Both loved Harley’s and needed something to live for, something to guide them and keep them going. Both came out of that cage of steel with no intention of ever being trapped again, be it physically or otherwise.

Harry was due to be released from Chino in the new year. He’d been arrested and charged for the possession of illegal weapons roughly two years before K-Day, and was finishing up his five-year sentence. He’d even requested(demanded) that Opie getting his top-rocker would be held off until he breathed free air again, and Opie had agreed, with Jax jumping in for the sake of solidarity. Since his arrest and K-Day, patches among the Sons had been moving around like it was a game of musical chairs. After Harry’s arrest, Vice President had gone to Clay, with Otto filling his role as Sergeant At Arms. Then Clay left right after K-Day, and the VP patch moved onto Otto, with SAA going to Tig. With one man in the wind and another in the joint, Piney had stepped up to assume a more active role in the club again, and his Electra Tri-Glyde hasn’t seen this much mileage since the early 2000’s. The only prospect they’d had in the past ten years beside Jax and Ope had been Juice, and that was only just after Harry had gone in. But that was perhaps a good thing, it would be easier to adjust rookie’s to this life if they didn’t get a taste of the money that running-guns rolled in.

JT forestalled any further argument by cutting in before anyone else came forth with ridiculous ideas, “Bobby's right. Juice, Chibs, you two pool all your info on the Mayans, hack into whatever and find out if they have any listed properties in the area. Get it to me ASAP. Tig, Happy,” he paused to make eye-contact, “you take care of our wondering security.” They both nodded with grim smiles, which dropped to grimaces on his next command, “And take care of those goddamned bodies. Trammel was only barely to keep it off the radar, but we all know that it won’t take much for someone else with a badge to go sniffin’ around, and to then find Tig’s DNA.” The reproach in his tone was clear. If those bodies made their way into some federal database, they were cooked. Not only were the two poor bitches illegally employed, which was a massive fine on its own, they were illegal immigrants as well, which was prison time. Add to that the very incriminating DNA to be found int their bellies, and they were were charred beyond recognition. They both nodded solemnly. “Get it all done in time for us to move in on our guns tonight. Plain clothes and the whole get-up. Understood?” Grim nods all around, so he moved on.

The rest of Church was spent discussing club trivialities such as bills and such, and within short order everyone was back in the main room, either getting ready to get drunk(Piney) or getting ready to run some errands(everyone else). JT made his way outside and towards the garage, where his son had finally managed to dislodge the entire deer. It’s various body-parts were stacked in a grizzly heap to the side. Jax was barely recognisable but for the parts of his face not covered in blood and guts. He was smoking a cigarette with a mercifully blood-free hand, and looked pensive. 

“What'd Gemma say?” 

JT cringed a little. Not only was he unused to his son calling his mother by her first name, but he hated the affect the entire ordeal was having on their son. Already slightly jaded by Thomas’ loss, Gemma’s betrayal had transformed their son into a full-blown cynic. When JT first realised that his wife was sleeping with his best friend, his first thought had been to keep it from Jax so as to spare him, while his second impulse had been just to ignore the whole sordid mess, since he wasn’t himself innocent of infidelity. He thought of Maureen in Ireland and their little girl, Trinity.

Regret was an old friend of his.

“She signed the papers.” He sighed. He was tempted to ask his son if he wanted to move back in with his mother, but he knew him well enough to know it would be a futile attempt, just like correcting the use of his mother’s name would be. “You and Ope want a ride home?” ‘Home' to Jax had become Harry and Mary’s spare bedroom. After about a month at the clubhouse, Mary had offered it’s use to Jax, who had been adamant to stay at the clubhouse, though it had been clear the raucous activities of it’s inhabitants had an affect on his already erratic sleep schedule. JT had seen the darkening circles under his eyes and had put his foot down and told him it was either Ope’s or back to his Mom’s house. That had decided it pretty quickly.

Jax looked indecisive for about two seconds before grimacing, as if only then remembering that he was covered in blood. “Shit. Mary’s probably gonna hose me down in the yard.” 

A deep chuckle could be heard as Opie approached. JT kept himself from startling, but it was a close thing. The kid looked and sounded like Bigfoot, just like his father. He had no idea how Mary put up with the sheer amount of hair an bass-tones. “Ma’s gonna dip you in bleach before she lets you in again.” 

On second thought, JT didn’t actually want his son anywhere near his bike in his current state. “Why don’t you go take a shower to rinse off the worst of it now, I need to make a phone call anyway.” His son nodded and walked to the clubhouse. JT turned to Ope, who was eyeing the pile of deer. “You headed up to see your dad this weekend?”

Ope looked up, “Nah, Mom said she’d take me later, since this weekend is a…uh…”

JT grinned, he was gonna mess with the kid. “Conjugal visit?” To his delight, Harry jnr turned bright red under that bush of a beard no boy of eighteen had any right to. He laughed and patted his shoulder. “Why don’t you go in and make sure your granddad’s sober enough to give you a ride home. Jax shouldn’t be too long, but you know how the old man goes.” Ope sauntered off, his expression pained. If it was from the thought of his parents’ activities during their monthly conjugal visits, the amount of alcohol his grandfathers was able to consume or the prospect of having to be the one to separate said grandfather from said alcohol, he would never know.

He huffed out one last chuckle, briefly lamented the loss of his own youth and then took out his phone. He dialled Rosen’s by now familiar number and walked over to his bike to lean against it. He needed to find out if the insurance company was going to pay out anything for BlueBird, and how much it would be. 

He had plans for that money, and it did not involve guns. 

 

It took about three round of shampoo, but Jax was finally able to run his fingers through his hair without any…clots. By then, the hot water had taken care of the rest of the mess, but he grabbed the soap just to be safe. He soaped up and rinsed off for the last time and got out, then eyed his pile of clothes critically. He dressed in the clean shit, jeans and socks he’d gotten from his emergency stash in his dad’s closet and carefully bundled the blood stained ones into a plastic bag. He’d probably end up burning them later. He grabbed his phone from the dresser and saw a text from Tara, a smile starting to tug at his mouth.

‘U busy?’

He checked his watch and fired off a quick reply, ‘Not if ur the one askin’. He donned his cutte and headed out, but he was only halfway down the hall when his phone vibrated again. 

‘Wanna come over?’  
Now he was grinning. ‘See u in a bit’. He’d have to wrangle a lift to her house out of his Dad, but he was sure that wouldn’t exactly be a Herculean effort. 

Once more, Jax indulged in a little fantasy in which he murdered Tig for ever suggesting that he and Ope be forbidden from riding their Harley’s as part of the whole prospect hazing thing unless it was for emergencies, which meant that they were stuck in the van whenever they tagged along on runs. He’d been so close to finally getting his ass on a Harley, he’d been working on a 2003 Dyna Super Glide(with the occasional assistance of his dad) that some asshole had left in his garage for ten years, only to be repo’ed and thus bought for a sixpence by him. It was nearing completion when Tig had passed the new law just to be a dick, and Ope’d had to grab his arm to keep him from braining Tig with a tyre iron. 

He went out to inform his dad of the change in destinations. Yeah, it was embarrassing to have to be dropped off at his girl’s house by his dad, but Jax could swallow his pride for a few blocks if it meant he’d get laid.

 

It was as they were basking in the afterglow, Tara sprawled over his chest and breathing into his neck that the real reason she had summoned him cam apparent.

“I got an acceptance letter from Chicago today.”

Quick as his next exhale, his good mood left his body and left him empty and gasping in it’s wake. They’d talked about this before, or rather, she had talked at him and he’d stubbornly refused to contribute to the conversation. She wanted to leave Charming, wanted to become a famous surgeon anywhere but here, and she wanted him to come with her. Quite a few times, her talking had evolved into screaming, which led to him screaming right back at her. She was furious that he wouldn’t even consider it, and he was furious that she even thought he would. Like he could just leave the club and everything that made him…him.

He opted for a new strategy and held in his sigh. “That's good. I’m proud of you.” He hadn’t realised how tense she had been in preparation for the oncoming battle until he felt her go lax on top of him at his statement. Whether it was defeat or relief remained to be seen.

She swallowed, took a breath, but didn’t say anything, so he only realised she was crying when he felt the wetness on his neck. He grit his teeth. Defeat, then. Nothing he could say would make this better for her or him. He felt like she was already gone, maybe even since the first time she mentioned college and he’d laughed at her. She was in his arms yet he missed her like crazy.

He let out the sigh he’d been holding in, “I need to go.” Her hold on him tightened momentarily before she nodded and rolled off him. He got up, trying not to meet her wide, wet eyes. 

He walked and got to the clubhouse before it was dark. The lot was empty of human life, but the Harley’s were all in their usual spots, lined up like pawns on a chessboard. The main room was almost just as quiet save for it’s lone occupant, Opie, who was perched on a stool at the bar, texting. Probably Donna. Ope nodded at him and then at the Chapel doors. 

Church was in session then. He made himself comfortable beside Ope, foregoing the couches spread throughout in favor of not having his hide tanned when church convened and he wasn’t waiting with freshly opened beers. Ope grunted at him, knowing better than to ask, but commiserating nonetheless.  
He had it a bit easier, Donna still had the wool over he eyes, and thought Ope was just a tough guy joining a group of Harley fanatics, but even oblivious bitches came with problems it would seem.

Jax loved Tara, he did. But sometimes he thought it would be better if he just spent the rest of his life waiting for the pussy to come to him and staying unattached.

It was as he was contemplating the benefits of life as an eternal bachelor that the Chapel doors opened and the guys started filing out. He vaulted over the bar top and had a beer ready just in time for Tig to grab it and nearly down it in one go. He was reaching for a fresh one but Tig stopped him with a gesture, “Keep it, Kid, we’re rollin’ out anyway.” 

Jax was burning to ask, but knew better than to enquire after club business when he hadn’t earned that right yet. He watched as all the guys got ready to leave, Chibs dispatching bullet-proof vests from the safe in the chapel, the guys donning them and then putting dark hoodies on over. His dad finished with his own process and came over to the bar.

“It’d be best if you boys hang around till we get back.” He looked right at Jax, and reached out to squeeze his shoulder. He suppressed a shudder.

Pretty soon the clubhouse was empty but for him and Opie, so they settled in for a long wait. They played pool, Opie texted Donna and Jax stared morosely at his phone, they played cards and gave up because they knew each other’s pokerfaces too well. Eventually Jax ended up taking a nap on the couch.

 

JT wanted to kill Tig. He wanted to empty a clip into the fucker’s chest and watch the blue bleed out of those crazy eyes.

They’d arrived to find minimal security(just the one guy, no cutte, but enough ink to indicate his affiliation, capped by Happy) and had loaded up their guns. Even when a trio of Mayans had arrived in the midst of Bobby’s Christmas Decoration Process - Roasted Amigo Edition, there hadn’t been any real cause for panic. They’d waited until the guys were inside and then taken them all down swiftly and silently, with a plan to tie and gag them just out of the blast range. Survivors to send a message. No biggie.

Or so they’d thought.

Everything had been set to go, Bobby grinning like a Halloween pumpkin, when one of the supposedly tied down Mayans had suddenly leapt up and dove for JT. Instead of doing the smart thing, the sane thing, like, say, tackling the guy since he was unarmed and not bound to be much trouble, Tig took aim and shot him. Twice.

Everything was quiet for about a second before the trussed up Mayans started screaming around their gags, their rapid-fire Spanish even more incomprehensible to the Sons than usual. Chibs had inspected the fallen Mayan, patting his pockets, and had come up with the thing that had JT wanting to hurl Tig into a flaming pit of cobras.

The dead Mayan had been none other than Esai Alvarez, Marcus Alvarez’s oldest son.

They’d high-tailed it out of there before Bobby was even finished detonating all the dynamite he’d planted.

 

Now, he was seated alone in the chapel, trying to figure out how he was going to wash the giant target newly stamped on his son’s forehead, and how he was going to keep his now ex-wife from seeing said target.

He blamed Tig, he blamed that stupid Mayan, he blamed the whole fucked up situation. But more than anything, he blamed himself.

For not bothering to check those Mayans’ ID’s, for not finding some other way to appease the Niners. For getting into guns in the first place, for raising a son into the shitstorm that was his life.

For not being a better father.

In the morning, he would have to have a talk with Jax.

For now, he had some praying to do, and hope that whatever God there may be wasn’t in the mood to fuck him over any more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, its been months but this was really hard to start with, but luckily when I finally did, it only took me like...two months? 
> 
> I suck.


	6. Jax, August 2017

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hop and a skip away from Kodiak Island, Raleigh's twin is experiencing life to its fullest.
> 
> Fullest as in everything sucks.

She was packing her stuff. Going about the room and systematically picking out whatever was important. Jewellery box, toiletries bag, pictures and knick-knacks and everything that made the room hers. By the door was a box labeled _books_ and another two labeled _clothes_. They seemed determined to him, somehow, for all that they were inanimate objects. They had a purpose.

Quite a juxtaposition to him, sitting on her bed in a daze, noting her movements in a detached sort of way. His throat burned from hours of begging, screaming and finally from just holding back tears. Once, on a rooftop with bloody hands, he’d promised himself he’d never cry again. At the time, he didn’t think it would be this hard.

_“It’s safer inland.” She said, yanking her clothes from her closet and roughly tugging out the hangers._

_“Come on, the robots got that shit in the bag!”_

_“Either way, Jax, I have a scholarship. Turning it down isn’t an option for me.”_

_“In fucking Chicago? Don’t think I’m stupid, Tara! If they made and offer, then San Diego and Los Angeles probably did too, hell, even San Francisco! You just want to get far away, you don’t want to give a life with me even a second thought!” He was frantic, grasping at straws and dark thoughts, but he couldn’t just let her go. She was the only good thing he had left._

_She tossed a handful of camisoles into the closest box and whipped around to glare at him, “I don’t want to sit at home, waiting for the cops to tell me you’re either in a jail cell or a bodybag, Jackson!” She sucked in a breath, “And San Francisco? Are you serious?! You think I would feel safe in a city that’s half ruined?” She hiccuped once and turned back to her task, trying to hide the tremble in her movements._

After that, he’d sunk down onto her bed and given up. He could leave, but he wanted to stay until the very last minute, keep these last images of her in his head for whenever he’d have to remind himself of why she left, why it was better for her to be away from him. To be safe.

There was a knock on the door and her dad, Martin, sauntered in, managing to look smug for all that he had virtually no hand in raising a daughter headed for college. He shot Jax a look of triumph as if he himself wasn’t a useless drunk who left Tara to her own devices after his wife kicked it. He handed Tara a roll of tape without even looking at her, keeping his eyes on Jax. “Said your goodbyes yet?”

He kept his mouth shut and breathed slowly through his nose, determined not to give the bastard anything. His returned stare didn’t waver, and eventually Martin was unsettled enough to turn his gaze to his daughter, who was ignoring the hostile undercurrent to the whole exchange as she always did. “Here’s the tape. Need any more boxes?” He glanced at the three by the door, “Not that the cutlass has space for much more…”

Tara shook her head and took the tape from her father, “Could you shut the door on your way out, please?”

Martin nodded and made to leave, but he hovered in the doorway, “Wheels up in fifteen, kid.” He shot one last venomous glare at Jax before he did as she asked.

There was a beat of silence during which they both contemplated how they would fit everything they felt into fifteen minutes. Then he got up and went to her, took her into his arms for what was probably going to be the last time. As he held her, as her hair and it’s apple scent tickled his nose and her arms squeezed him tight around the middle, almost everything in him screamed to never let her go. The rest of him, the not-actually-so-tiny part of him that was perfectly aware that this was the best choice for the both of them, breathed a sigh of guilty relief that it was finally over.  
In the three weeks since she’d dropped the bomb that she was leaving for a shiny future of medicine in Chicago, every single second they spent together saw them either screaming at each other or desperately clinging to one another, feverishly uttering declarations of undying love into sweaty necks or panting mouths. Add to that Jax’s hazardous predicament, and it made for two people who were wrung out and exhausted before their lives even supposedly began.

After about ten of the allotted fifteen, the hold broke and they were left staring at each other. He held her chin between thumb and forefinger, dropping a featherlight kiss on her mouth. “Be safe. I love you.”

He made to leave, afraid that if he stayed any longer he might have been tempted to spend the last five minutes begging her to stay again, but she grabbed his sleeve, her voice plaintive, “You too, Jax. With the whole…” She made a vague hand gesture but he knew. Knew everything that little movement indicated.

Unbidden, his stomach knotted itself into a series of complex loops and for a second of sheer, blind panic, he thought he just might throw up. He choked out one last ‘Love you’ before he practically threw himself through her bedroom door, down the hall and into the living room where Martin was watching some Kaiju vs. Jaeger youtube analysis, sipping a beer like he wasn’t going to spend several hours driving his daughter to another state soon. He slammed through the front door and past a waiting Chibs, going straight for his bike.

Once again, a tide of humiliation rose in him. For all that Tig’s bullshit ban on riding had been lifted, the club’s beef with the Mayans was growing every day, and so he’d basically traded one pair of shackles for another. He got on his Dyna, put on his sunglasses and helmet and backed out the driveway into the street, with Chibs scrambling to keep up. He felt a momentary pulse of guilt for giving the guy so much shit to deal with, but figured it was one less thing he would torture himself with since he was only about to make it a whole lot worse. He needed a few hours to himself, and he wasn’t going to get that at the clubhouse or with his damn tail.

As soon as the opportunity presented itself, he ditched Chibs and made a series of random turns to throw him off. The only place he could think of where nobody would look for him was his mother’s house, and he thanked whatever deity would listen when he drove by and her car wasn’t in the driveway. Just to be safe, he parked his bike a block down, behind Mrs Hunt’s overgrown ivy-trellis, knowing she wouldn’t mind as long as he flashed her his trademark panty-dropper grin. He walked back to his mom’s house and into the rather extensive back garden, where he sat down in her not-so-secret weed patch and let himself think.

  
He dug out his Marlboros and lit up, took a deep drag and held it in for a bit before exhaling. He felt himself calm down a little.

In a nutshell, everything was going to shit on both personal and club levels.

Since the morning his dad had called him into the chapel to talk to him alone, the only time he’d had to himself was when he was in the bathroom or asleep. The rest of the time he was either surrounded by sons, or “accompanied" by Chibs or Opie, and less so of the latter since he’d taken his riding privileges and used them to spend every waking moment with Donna. It was mortifying, being a prospect who needed an escort to his girlfriend’s house, even worse than having to beg a lift from his dad. He was man enough to admit, quietly, to himself, that the back of his dad’s bike was still the place he felt the safest in the world.

These days, however, there were very few places he felt truly safe. What was supposed to be a fuck-you-sincerely, end-of-story retaliation hit had turned into a bottomless can of carnivorous worms. The Mayans had yet to call and outright war, but they had been hounding the Sons whenever they set foot outside of Charming, and the red-hot target on Jax’s forehead might have gone unspoken, but was acknowledged by all.

Not only had they lost the warehouse and a good chunk of hardware, they had also lost whatever weapons surplus they had and were thus going into a war unarmed. The two dead whores Tig left behind hadn’t helped either, but had placed the Deputy Chief’s attention firmly on the club. They’d managed to outfox him and get the bodies out before they could be linked to the club, but it had only made the hard-on he had for the Sons stand to attention.

Even without the Mayans and the Law on their ass, business was getting tight. Oakland and it’s previously thriving criminal underbelly was fading. The harbour was completely locked down due to Kaiju Blue, which made receiving ‘shipments' a tad difficult. The Sons and IRA had had to get pretty innovative, and the bribery section in the budget had started to be its main feature. JT was meeting with the new IRA go-between that night to renegotiate terms, to figure out a more cost-effective way of getting the guns into Northern Cali. LA was turning into a money vacuum with everyone who needed their palms greased just to look the other way.

The Club was running out of money and guns.

And he was running out of sanity. Whenever he gave himself time to think about it he felt like everything that kept him going was systematically getting picked off. Thomas, Gemma, his freedom to go where he pleased, and now Tara.

Underneath it all, thrumming like a live cable and steadily overtaking everything else, was the fear that this, this feeling of constantly dodging curveballs whilst hopelessly running to keep up was what being a Son meant. Had he signed himself up for a life without rest or even a vague ideal of happiness?

His last cigarette was halfway burnt down and he was nowhere closer to any sort of resolution, when he heard his mother’s car in the driveway, which was his cue to scram. He ninja-stealthed his way past the house and down the street to where his bike was. Mrs Hunt gave him a mock-stern look through her kitchen window, which crumpled predictably when he flashed his pearly whites. It was a small thing, but it made him feel a little better. The drive across town to the Lot would help too. It was his favourite time of day to drive, when the light was fading and parents were calling their kids inside, but not yet dark enough for the street lights to come on yet.

He was at cruising speed, so by the time he hit Main it was full dark and most of the stores were shut up tight. Macy’s Diner was naturally still bright if somewhat empty, the after-work-crowd just having cleared out. He parked and sauntered in, his neglected stomach yelling obscenities for all to hear. He grinned at the busty blonde girl behind the counter, vaguely recognising her from school. She blushed prettily and took his usual order. It was as he was waiting that he bothered to take out his phone.

Two calls from Chibs.  
One call from his dad, which probably meant Chibs gave up and called his dad, which also meant he would have to get his burger and make haste or he’d well and truly be in for it.  
One message from Tara.

He swallowed around the lump in his throat and shoved the phone into his pocket, his lightened mood vanishing. He should’ve probably called his dad and let him know he was safe, but he could only deal with one crushingly depressing thing at a time right then.

He collected his burger and payed without even bothering to smile at the counter girl, and completely ignored the phone number scrawled on the receipt. He sat on his bike and devoured his dinner in three bites, then strapped on his helmet and started up. When he stopped at the red light, about six blocks from the Lot, he heard the familiar roar of another Harley pulling up and he turned his head to look, vaguely hoping it wasn’t his dad.

It wasn’t his dad.

Whoever it was, was covered up head to toe. Black hoodie and a bandana over the lower half of their face, no cutte. His first instinct was that someone was on a job, but even as a prospect, Jax would have had some idea if something was going down tonight besides the Irish meet. He didn’t recognise the bike, and he felt the blood draining from his face, his entire body going cold.

It was like everything was moving in slow motion, and it was still happening too fast for him to catch up. His hand made a futile twitch toward the gun in his shoulder holster, but there was already a gun rushing up to aim point-blank at his face. Luckily, reflexes that weren’t yet trained to reach for a gun were still useful to some degree, which was good enough to save his life when he swung up his other arm to knock the gun aside, and he launched himself backwards to try and take cover behind his bike. Reflexes, however, weren’t always good for follow through, since this also caused his bike to topple over with him and pin him. Blind panic grabbed hold of his mind, and he thrashed about like an animal.

He was going to die. His life didn’t flash before his eyes, he didn’t think of everyone he would leave behind, he didn’t formulate any plans.

Gasoline in his nose, copper in his mouth, searing pain in his leg, a blur of traffic lights and gravel in his sight, and the squeal of tires and a tremendously loud crash. His bike was jostled, the pain ratcheted up his leg and he screamed. His vision became liquid and he abruptly clenched his teeth to stop, because screaming that loud hurt.

Gunshots, shouting. His ears started ringing.

“Jax! Jackson!” A woman’s voice yelled. He felt hands on his face and he wanted to jerk back or bite, but they were gentle enough to calm him down some. His vision cleared and he was completely befuddled by who he saw hovering over him.

“C-can you move?” Luanne asked, patting his chest and shoulders with shaky hands. When he tried one more time to see if he could wriggle his way from under his Dyna, he let out another blood-curdling scream. It felt like his entire body was hardwired to that single point of pain in his leg, to the extent that he couldn’t tell where it was coming from anymore. He bit down hard and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to turn his focus inward, to imagine that he wasn’t in pain. It was futile, but at least the screaming stopped. The lack of movement meant the pain was less like being suspended over open flames and more like a really, really, really bad sunburn. Like really bad.

The next time he opened his eyes it was because the sound of a siren was piercing through the fog around his mind. Luanne’s frantic patting had subsided to a death-grip on his hand. He panicked a little. Sirens probably didn’t have positive connotations for anyone, but his reaction to them had been branded into his brain since he was old enough to understand that most of his family could be classified as the ‘bad guys’.

The death grip ons his hand relaxed just a tad, “The ambulance is here.”

The entire process of being freed from under his bike, transferred onto a gurney and into the ambulance was a blur, with the only clear moment being when his Dyna was lifted and the pain peaked again. Once he was situated in the relative safety of the ambulance, he let himself sink into the beckoning darkness.

 

* * *

 

 The funeral was something for the record books.

Almost every man in the country with the Reaper on his back -and even some from other MC’s who didn’t- made an appearance at some point to pay his respects. The sound alone was enough to keep everyone indoors, the rumbling roar of hundreds of engines rattled windows and set dogs to barking. The clubhouse was packed to the rafters and beyond, every motel in the surrounding area was booked to capacity and some people even mentioned pitching tents. Providing food had every old lady, croweater and sweetbutt permanently parked in a kitchen somewhere or bustling about switching empty plates for full ones.

It would have been jovial if not for the sombre cast to every face and the line coiling out from the street to inside the chapel, where a beautiful, closed casket was situated over the Reaper carved into the table. Redwood on redwood. In life and death. As much harbinger of death as the crow that became their unofficial callsign, as some preferred to look at it.

Jax was numb to it all. In some part due to good ol’Jack making a nice addition to the prescribed cocktail of pain meds for the past two days, but mostly because the body in the casket had once been his father.

Under the direction of his mother, Opie had carefully hoisted him from his sweat-damp sheets this morning after several attempts to get him to rise on his own had failed. The awkward, cheerfully blue cast on his leg had been wrapped and sealed in a garbage bag to keep it dry whilst he was plonked under the warm spray of the shower. He gained sensibility for long enough to soap up and rinse off, barely noticed the twinge to his pride when he needed help getting out of the shower, and dressed in the clothes passed to him like a robot. He paused briefly, when he was handed his cutte. The one his father had specially made for him, with the Reaper Crew curved along one side and the AK scythes embellishing the collar. Opie helped him shrug it on and with it he felt the rising tide of pain-fury-misery threatening to overwhelm him again. He wasn’t supposed to have it yet, since he was not yet patched in, but Bobby had handed it to him the previous week with tears soaking into his ample moustache and that had been that.

He popped his last pill and took a swig from one of the bottles on his bedside table to stave it off just a little longer. When this was over, when all of these people were gone, he would need it to push him forward. To do what needed to be done.

He was put on the couch by the doors of the chapel, cast propped on the coffee table, where he was offered condolences, his shoulder was squeezed and his non-responsive state was given pitying looks in a continuous loop.

Gemma sat on the arm of the couch, looking suitably teary-eyed yet stoic and nodding solemnly in her own loop.

Jax wasn’t buying it.

He’d woken up in the hospital after surgery only long enough for her to inform him through snot and tears that his father had been killed before he passed out again, floating on a cloud of morphine.

When next he woke up, she was more composed. With lips trembling only slightly and her hands tight around the hospital bed’s rail, she told him that he had gone to her house to get her and bring her to the hospital with him, both so she could see Jax and so she was in the relative safety of the hospital. He had been waiting for her to get dressed when she heard a gunshot. She’d grabbed one of the numerous guns from her stash and crept into the kitchen, only to find JT, dead. She recalls looking out the window and seeing a Harley with ape-hanger handlebars speeding off.

It was all very convincing, but for one thing.

One betrayal and the subsequent removal of the wool over his eyes had been sufficient to reveal to him all of Gemma’s tells, few though they were.

And that wobbly lip was one of them.

To anyone else, it might not have been out of place on a woman who had just lost her husband of many years to such brutality, but Jax was certain. That wasn’t grief.

That was _fear_.

And she was absolutely terrified, judging by the lengths she was going in order to appear the devastated widow.

Though Gemma’s style of dress ran along a trend that was considered white trash and gaudy by some, he knew, it was always immaculately done. In the two weeks leading up to the funeral, she hadn’t worn makeup once. Designer jeans gave way to the ones she reserved for working in the garden or baking days. Artfully rhinestoned or sequinned blouses were switched out for t-shirts or tanks under plaid shirts, some of which had belonged to none other than his father.

Perhaps she was sentimental in her own twisted way.

Jax himself had slipped into that quiet place inside his soul, where he had gone when Tommy died, where he had slipped briefly when Gemma’s true nature revealed itself. It allowed him some distance from the agony. It availed to him the clear-headedness he needed to put everyone around him under a microscope.

The day he’d been discharged from the hospital had been the first time he’d been allowed in on an official chapel meeting.

It was ironic that the moment that should have been his official ushering into manhood and independence had been the moment where he had never felt more helpless instead, his eyes glued to the Chair that Otto wordlessly refused to occupy until he had been officially patched in as Prsident, which would be nothing but a formality.

As much as ever Son had wanted to flatten the Mayans until there was nothing left, no guns and no money meant they were basically sitting ducks waiting for a windfall. So they had decided to wait until all of the charters came down for the funeral, where they would enlist the help of their distant brothers whilst also using the spectacle it would cause as a show of force to buy them some time.

Jax jolted back into the present when the Lowell’s junior and senior came shuffling up the line. Senior looked pale and jumpy, as he almost always did. Junior looked like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. Senior’s compulsive rubbing of the crook of his left arm made a light ding on in Jax’s head.

For all that Lowell Senior was the only person JT had trusted to put hands on his girl, the man had only ever been kept in line by one specific sleazeball who was rather conspicuously missing from today’s proceedings.

Clay Morrow.

The man who’s name was still on the wall, and who still received his share of Teller-Morrow profits every month.

In the form of a cheque.

A cheque that somehow reached him via one Gemma Teller, because nobody else could make ass-end from front bumper the way she could when it came to the shop’s books, though she did it mostly online now that her presence was less than welcome on the lot.

Jax’s gut lurched, and it had nothing to do with Bobby’s fiery chilli.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeing as it took me nearly half a year to write, it should be obvious that this chapter was hard for me to write. Partially due to feeling rather uninspired regarding this specific project, and partially because I'm hellishly lazy.
> 
> But this week lit a fire under my ass and I promised myself I'd get this chapter out before the new year.
> 
> Maybe the sudden inspiration came from having to spend time with my horrible extended family.
> 
> Who knew they could be good for anything.
> 
> Anyway, I'm still not entirely happy with it, so if you spot something hinky don't hesitate to let me know.


	7. Vera, January 15th, 2017

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vera Chesnikova does what she was born and trained to do.

She was shaking.

She was on a rooftop in Miami where it was an unseasonably hot twenty seven degrees celsius and she was shaking so bad her teeth were chattering. Her rifle was across her lap, and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she should get up and disappear, but right then most of it was occupied with trying to force air back into her protesting lungs. When the edges of her vision started getting fuzzy and the gravel-strewn rooftop started tilting sideways, she had one predominant urge.

Get it together.

She sucked in a big breath of air and let it out as slow as she could, and repeated the process until she wasn’t seeing spots anymore. She started disassembling her rifle piece by piece. Silencer to empty shell, it all went into various designated compartments in her rifle bag, cleverly disguised as a purple floral print acoustic guitar case. She got up, dusted off her equally floral print yoga pants and straightened her high ponytail. From her little leather satchel she got the chemical decontaminant spray every field agent had an ample supply of and thoroughly misted it over the whole area. She then shouldered her satchel, took up her case and made her way to the stairwell, down fourteen flights of stairs and into the tiny apartment on the second floor.

As soon as she was in a relatively safe space, she allowed herself ten minutes of sitting on the kitchen floor and staring into space, contemplating what she had just done.

A block away, in a little kid’s park, a man was dead. Police were arriving on scene and rounding up witnesses, who would all claim to have seen various versions of the same thing: The man, dressed in a faded paisley shirt and khakis, had been sitting on the bench and fiddling with his phone when his head had exploded all over the penguin statues behind him. Nobody heard any shots or loud noises.

Eventually, the police will find the chloroform in the man’s pocket, which will lead to them finding his nondescript, tan-coloured van, stocked with candy, plastic sheeting and everything that screams pedophile. Knowing this, lead-investigators will drag their feet, checking the high-rises around the park and it’s occupants. They will find one Kaiju cult, uncover several activities of varying degree of legality, but they won’t find a sniper. They won’t find any traces of gun-powder on any rooftops, they won’t even narrow it down to exactly which direction the shot came from. They will knock on the door of an emancipated seventeen-year-old with brown eyes, purple hair and and alarming amount of floral print, and they will wish her a happy day further and tell her to stay out of trouble.

The case file will eventually make it’s way onto the bottom of the pile, and then the bottom of the cold-case filing cabinet, and then it will only be unearthed again in a decade, maybe more.

If Miami or anything was still standing in a decade. The threat of the Kaiju didn’t exactly endear people to their fellows, and the crime rates everywhere has been soaring.

Three hours after the police finally found their way to her door, she was on a plane headed home in another ‘teenage girl’ disguise. Her hair was forest green this time, she had on a oversized shirt with the word ‘Mischief' and a picture of the norse god Loki from some movie-comic adaptations with tight black pants and roughed-up combat boots.

Home being wherever her dad was, which at that point in time was Washington. He was doing damage control after a disastrous election sent just about everything and everyone into hysterics. The new Head Of State was making drastic changes that were dangerous to their organisation and thus the world at large. The American seat on the Pan Pacific Defence Council was at the moment precariously balanced on a candy-floss tight rope over a pit of fire-breathing snakes, seeing as nobody wanted yet another city fried, this time because of a Cheeto with twitchy fingers and access to the biggest stash of nukes on record. Add to that an increasingly sinister vampire with slimy fingers and access to the actual biggest stash of nukes on the planet, and everyone was sort of just regretting that they wouldn’t be there to see the next Kaiju’s reaction as it ascends from the deep unknown to nothing but rubble and radioactive cockroaches.

Thinking of it all made her head hurt, so she distracted herself by people-watching. She was trained to look at the details and to paint a picture truer than what most people perceived, but in situations like this she liked to deviate from her father’s strict training and…imagine. She looks at the lady in the seat next to her and envisions a family back home with two kids and a dog with a husband who barbecues on Saturdays. Or the couple across the isle making frequent eye-contact laden with lascivious intent, who are probably going to fuck in the bathroom before the two-and-a-half-hour flight is over. Or the man in front of them dressed in a smart suit with a brief-case across his lap, who probably does this flight a few times a week if not daily to finalise million-dollar deals in each city.

No matter how hard she tries, she can never keep her eyes from spotting all the details that ruin the story and reveal the shitty state of the world as a whole. Judging by the long sleeves, puffy eyes nearly caked with concealer besides a general thick application of makeup, the way she kept clenching her jaw but then wincing with the movement, this woman was the victim of an abusive partner. The couple was continually exchanging furtive glances because one of them was hiding drugs somewhere on their person, both were sweaty, a little shaky and the way the woman was consistently squirming in her seat makes the guess of which one it was a pretty obvious one. The man with the briefcase’s suit was sharp but obviously well worn, suggesting a lay-off from a well-paying job, he had his briefcase over his lap either to hide an erection or to clutch at nervously because he was deathly afraid of flying.

Vera huffed and turned her gaze to the clouds outside her window, her headache renewed and pounding full-force.

-8§8-

When she arrived at the airport, she bypassed baggage claim, everything of import compacted neatly in her backpack, and headed straight for the exit, besides, her own personal baggage claim was located elsewhere.

She had her phone out and was following it’s instructions along a blue-print of the airport and surrounding area towards a blinking blue dot in the parking lot. Eventually she’s on top of the blue dot, and it seemed that whoever their artillery guy in DC was, he had a sense of humour. Taking up only half it’s designated parking space was a two-door, neon-lemon-vomit coloured smart car. She snorted and did a circuit around the car, looking for clues as to where the keys might be stashed. The little door over the gas-port was very slightly ajar, and it opened with a little tug, expelling the keys for her to catch neatly on her boot.

Weighed down by a larger backpack and an address, she put the keys back where she found them and made her way to the bus-stop. She took a meandering route via various modes of public transport and dumped her phone along the way, switching to the new one in the backpack.

It took her about three hours to make a trip that normally only takes one and a half, and she spent the last twenty minutes of it walking, again following the directions on her phone.

Upscale Maryland proved no match for satellite navigation, and pretty soon she found herself on top of another blinking blue dot. The house was immaculate, or so she guessed, since it had ten foot, ivy-covered walls surrounding it. The gate was a massive wooden contraption, though it swung open silently on what must have been well-oiled hinges, and just enough for her to slip through and onto the property. From there it was another little walk of about five minutes to get to the front door.

The house was massive, with floor-to-ceiling windows almost everywhere, though they were all reflective, so she or anyone else couldn't see into the house. The whole thing was surrounded by huge trees of various kinds, that she knows must conceal dozens if not hundreds of ‘security measures’. Cameras, infrared, etc. Her every move was probably being processed and run through their home database as she stood there, matching up her face, gait, height and whatever else to her profile in the system.

She felt her entire body start to relax, despite knowing it was probably a stupid thing to do. Though in the modern world they lived in just about everything was under the scrutiny of a so-called ‘Big Brother’, there was something inexplicably soothing to her about being under the all-seeing eye of her own. She knew exactly who was watching her and why, and she knew that nobody else in the world, barring horrible and unthinkable circumstances, would ever see the inner workings of House Chesnikov.

She laid her hand on the glass of the door, close to where the handle would be, and waited precisely two seconds for the phone in her hand to beep quietly before she pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The inside of the house was all hardwood floors in dark red hues, white walls decorated with sepia-toned Japanese prints and refurbished Edwardian furniture ranging from dove-grey to pitch-black. The first floor was all an open floor plan, with the living room, kitchen, dining and entertainment area all one big room. She went upstairs, where she could look down into aforementioned dining room. The second floor had four bedrooms and ensuites, the last of which she didn’t enter since it was obviously her dad’s. She’d never set foot in this house before, but she knew which room was hers.

Of the remaining three rooms she did enter, only one had a single strawberry cupcake in a neat little see-through box on the desk. That’s how she knew that this room’s closet would have clothes of varying styles in her size, and that the bathroom cabinet would have her favourite deodorant, face cream and wash, as well as a toothbrush. She also knew that there was a handgun stuck to the desk’s underside with a magnetic holster made with this purpose in mind, that one of the nondescript lipstick tubes in the bag with her toiletries would have a roll-out blade and that the bed’s headboard had several ore guns and knives and maybe even a grenade or two.

She stashed her backpack in the closet, took a long shower to wash away the blood that lingered in her mind and dressed in some sweats and a t-shirt. She put the cupcake in the fridge to be split neatly down the middle and enjoyed for dessert later, and set about making dinner for her and her dad.

As she sautéed some mushrooms, a series of images flickered in her head.

Black and white penguin statues, spattered pink with pulverised brain matter and blood.

A little sandpit, strewn with little sandcastles crafted by clammy, energetic little hands.

She banged the frying pan with a little more force than necessary and focused on her breathing. Forcibly ridding her mind of these images and all that they entailed, she went back to her task with renewed vigour. She only had to make it until her dad was home, until he would walk in and remind her why they as a family took on this burden. He squeeze her tightly to his chest and drop a kiss on her head. He would remain silent, say nothing, but it would all be in his eyes.

The Chesnikovs did what they had to to make the world a better place, even if it meant filling up every available space in their memories with the faces of those they killed, and those they saved.

She did a mental tally. The man she had taken out had been responsible for five children going missing in the last year. On one side of the board was his face, the first of many more to come. On the other, five children for every year that he might have lived, unimpeded by authorities.

She breathed a little easier after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay everything is kind of rearranged now and I improved some stuff and such. The order of chapters it was previously in bothered me.


	8. February 2016

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Beckets' last stretch at Kodiak.

During the two-week break between the second and third trimester, Yancy was faced with a problem he had, stupidly, never seen coming.

This problem was a short, suave and adorable Peruvian-Chinese fellow by the name of Tendo Choi. He was from the tech side of the Academy, and he managed to tie Yancy’s stomach into all sorts of crazy knots whenever he was around, which, considering he had seemed to take a liking to the “Brothers Becket” (his own words), was often enough that Yancy was sure he’d walk out of the situation with rock-hard abs. It didn’t help that Tendo seemed to have a special talent for teasing his little brother out of his shell, something that had been happening less and less ever since they enlisted. The guy had them both beat in age by a couple of years, yet it never seemed to be an issue. He went out of his way to include Raleigh in everything they did and filled up their days with mad laughter and sneaked-in booze.

Yancy had, in the span of the first week, fallen so hard and so spectacularly that the crater was probably visible from space.

Then, during the second week, back at the academy, disaster struck.

He and Raleigh had been fruitlessly trying to figure out just what exactly they would be facing in the simulation-drops that would be commencing with the new trimester. It had gone from a simple conversation to a heated debate to a short, mutual anxiety attack that may or may not have involved tears and ended in a heap of limbs and exhaustion on the scruffy carpet. His little brother’s head was tucked under his chin and it was only a little weird. Almost every article and interview on existing pilots had warned them of an increased need for physical contact. So far they had only really drifted once, but given just how strong their neural handshake was it was apparently normal to have random bouts of cuddling.

Yancy’s mind ran itself in circles trying to figure out whether it was really weird or if he was the weird one and making it weird when it really wasn’t. Luckily, he was saved from making himself dizzy when their was a hurried knock on their door.

He sprang up to answer it, ignoring the thump and the indignant yelp from his brother. He yanks open the door to reveal a bummed and harangued looking Tendo. There was a sizeable rip down the side of his pants, exposing a nicely tanned and toned upper thigh, his shirt was half untucked and he was panting like a dog on a hot day.

Tendo squirrelled his way past a confused Yancy and into their room. “Help me, I need to hide before he finds me!”

“Who?” Raleigh piped up from the floor where he was now sitting, rubbing his elbow where it had acquired a nasty looking rug-burn from Yancy shoving him to the side to answer the door.

“Alison's brick wall of a boyfriend. I think his name was Brock or something? Anyway, close the door!” 

Yancy, who had been standing with his hand on the door handle with his mouth open like a dead fish, snapped to attention and quickly slammed the door shut. “Why would Brock Or Something be chasing you?” Something dinged in his head like an annoying bell. His heart was torn between wedging itself in his trachea and plummeting into his socks. “Nevermind, don’t answer that. I can guess.” 

Raleigh, however, did not seem to be on the same page. “What can he guess? What did you do?” 

Curse the innocence of youth. 

Tendo flopped himself onto the bottom bunk and finished catching his breath whilst the brothers stared at him, Raleigh in befuddlement and Yancy with dread. “Well, as you may know, Alison and I have had a nice thing going. Mutually satisfactory…uh…coitus,” He laughed to himself as the brothers flinched and groaned at the accursed word. “Anyway, so today, my pants are around my ankles and I’ve just got her coveralls down to reveal the sweetest-”

Yancy cleared his throat loudly, both out of wanting to preserve his little brother’s inconvenient innocence just a little longer and out of his instinctive reaction to anything of the female nudity variety. It’s not that he was repulsed, but it was rather like thinking of eating dry chicken when there was a juicy steak right in front of you.

Tendo rolled his eyes, “Whatever. Point is, shit is just about to get good when she gets a message that her visiting boyfriend, who she conveniently forgot was coming today, is on his way to her room. Me? Well, I’m pretty sure I did permanent damage to The Goods with how hard and fast I pulled up my pants, and everything would have been fine,” he pauses to take a few hasty breaths, “But then my pants got stuck somehow in the zipper of her coveralls, and by the time we just gave up and ripped it all to hell, we could hear his stupid meathead footsteps coming our way. Needless to say, he drew some pretty fast conclusions when I stumbled out of there with half my pants missing and his girlfriend’s zipper mangled.” He shrugs. “I did what anyone would do. I bolted.”

Raleigh was wide-eyed and grinning, the picture of awe and teenaged idiocy, and his onslaught of questions made a space in which Yancy could pretend to be busy at their tiny kitchenette, numbly scooping coffee into two cups and dropping a little bag of chamomile into a third for Raleigh. The kid hated the stuff, but he needed it if there was any hope of sleep at night.

He hadn’t realised until then that he’d been holding out any hope, but as soon as it struck him, he hated himself a little. He’d dragged him and his little brother here to make something of themselves, not for him to get laid or…whatever else there could have been. How could he have been so utterly selfish? And besides, beyond mild flirtation, Tendo ad never given any indication that he was interested in Yancy beyond friendship. Hell, looking back on it, Tendo flirted with everyone. 

“So why didn’t you run to your room?” his brother's voice pulled him out of his little spiral of self-loathing.

“This was closer. And the tech dorms is the first place he’d look. He’s probably too stupid and chickenshit to risk a dust-up with a pilot.” Tendo huffed and thumped his head against the pillow. “Do you guys mind if…”

“You want us to harbour a fugitive until Meathead is gone?” Yancy quipped as he finally turned around with the steaming cups, handing them off to their respective drinkers before grabbing his own.

Raleigh was already nodding his head and blowing over his tea, which was comical enough that it brought a smile to Yancy’s face and had Tendo laughing outright. “'Course you can stay here, Tendo. Yancy can sleep on the floor.”

Yancy nearly spit his coffee all over the kid. No way was he giving up his bunk for the floor, and no way was he going to subject himself to the torture that would be having Tendo within arm’s reach if he was half-drunk with sleep. God alone knew what he would do without his waking mind fully present to keep him in check.

Luckily Tendo seemed to sense Yancy’s reluctance if not the reason for it. “Actually, nevermind Becket Junior, I’m sure he’ll stop prowling the hallways eventually. I’ll be out of your goldilocks in no time.” He grinned and flashed a wink at Yancy, who ducked his head and inhaled the steam from his coffee to hide his blush. Stupid capillaries in his stupid cheeks.  
Later, when the Beckets were tucked in bed and alone after a few hours of ribbing Tendo and his ripped pants, Yancy was just about to drop of when a hesitant vocalisation from the bunk above him yanked him out of dreamland.

“Yancy…do you…like…are you in love with Tendo?”

Yancy sat up so fast he early brained himself on the top-bunk’s bars. “W-what?! Why would you ask that?”

Some small corner of his mind, the one that had always been freakishly in sync with Raleigh and had become more insistent since they drifted, could practically feel how his little brother tensed up, some instinctive reaction to any hint of confrontation. But the rest of him, the part that was just Yancy, went into full panic mode. “I've never-” 

“It's just that you look at him like you do. Like him I mean.” 

Fuck. Had anybody else noticed? Was he that obvious? “Kid, I don’t know what you think you’re seeing-” 

“Yancy…please just stop. I know you like guys. I don’t care. It would be kind of hypocritical if I did.”

Wait, what? Yancy swung himself out of his bunk and stood next to it so he could look his brother in the eye. His gut tightened in shame when his little brother seemed to shrink in on himself, tightening into a little ball with his back to he wall. His voice was hesitant, tiny. “I think…I mean I’ve never…you know. I think I like both. And I mean you’re my brother. I’d never judge you or whatever, no matter what you did.”

Yancy let out a huge breath. He didn’t know what to do now. He’d held on to this for so long, he’d spent hours angsting over what he’d do if Raleigh ever found out and yet he had no idea how to react now that his brother had dropped this bomb on him. 

“I was going to come out, you know, before Mom.” A flash of pain in those baby-blues, but he got a nod. “But then everything happened and I guess…I guess I got used to keeping it all in.” He snorted. “I never figured you’d be a little bent yourself.”

Raleigh turned beet-red and buried his face in his drawn-up knees. “Saying it like that makes it seem weird. I’ve never felt weird about it.” He lifted his head. “I just kind of…realised, one day. And then I rolled with it.” He shrugged. “When did you know?” 

Yancy sucked on his teeth, thinking. It was somewhat surreal to be having this conversation. “I think I kind of always knew? I mean, now that I think about it, neither of us ever really went through that elementary school couple thing. It only really hit me that I’d never looked at girls until middle school when you were still in elementary, and I was forced to hang out with the guys and it was all they could talk about.” 

Raleigh snickered, “I'm sorry my abandonment led to you realising dick is bomb.”

Yancy made a strangled noise and grabbed at Raleigh’s pillow to beat him over the head with it, his face flaming. “Raleigh Becket, you little shit! I will beat your ass!”

Raleigh was laughing so hard, all he could do was cover his head and face with his arms and take the (well-deserved) beating.

When his face was down to a more manageable temperature, Yancy stopped his assault and flopped down on his bunk, hugging the pilfered pillow. It seemed, for the first time in years, that the pillow was the only weight on his chest, and he was almost dizzy with the giddiness being able to breathe brought him.

“So…you do like Tendo?” his brother’s smug voice invaded his new-found peace. 

“I dunno. Maybe I do. But where would that even get me? As you can ascertain from today’s events, Tendo is off-limits.” 

Raleigh’s head popped over the edge of the top bunk, and even upside-down, his arched right eyebrow could convey all the derision he was capable of(and for such a sweet-natured kid, it was a rather shocking amount). “Did you not just hear me say I’m bi? Did you hit yourself with that pillow?” He snatched it out of Yancy’s arms like a big, ugly, swooping bird, and Yancy provided the sound-effect to that imagery with an indignant squawk. “Who's to say Tendo isn’t into guys too?” 

Yancy huffed. “It's more than that, Kid.” He paused, trying to figure out how to give voice to his innermost thoughts without sounding like an insecure twelve-year old. “Why would he even go for me? You’ve seen Alison. I can’t compete with the likes of that.” Yep. Still managed to sound like a twelve-year old.

Raleigh made a noise like a dying moose hopped up on helium, and Yancy was starting to worry about what their neighbours would think of all the strange noises emanating from their bunk. Marshall Pentecost, the Beckets seem to be harbouring a zoo in their room. “Yance, for the love of God, don’t give me that shit. Have you seen yourself? Wait, don’t answer that. I would perish on the spot at your answer, I’m sure. Lemme put it this way, I’ve seen the way people -and those people would just so happen to include both Alison and Tendo, thank you very much- look at you. I mean, sure, every time I see you shirtless I wanna throw myself into a pile of Kaiju-shit, but that’s just because I’m the only one with taste.” He hefts himself back up onto his own bunk just in time to avoid the swipe from Yancy, cackling evilly all the way. “Really hate to break it to you, big bro, but in the eyes of anyone who isn’t related to you, you’re a ten.”

Yancy has to take a moment to himself to process that, so he just chuckles at his brother’s bullshit and heads to the bathroom. He will eternally regret teaching his brother how to sass.

It was as he was crawling back under the blankets, his brother miraculously asleep, that it hit him again just where they were and what they were about to do. How could he even devote any time to thinking about relationships feelings when they were going to be battling simulated-yet-only-slightly-less-terrifying Kaiju within less than a week? Not only would he have to face those things himself, but he would have to witness, to feel his little brother go through the same thing. Yancy’s worst nightmare wasn’t any sort of monster. It was his brother suffering through fear and pain. He marvelled at how any of the pilots that have already faced down actual Kaiju were still able to do it. Hell, the Gages? Even though it was very soon to be reality, Yancy couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine going through that, being immersed in his brothers fear and feeding his own back to him.

Heart weighing a thousand tons once again, Yancy eventually drifted off to sleep, and for once, the darkness of sleep didn’t bring him the bliss it usually did.

 

<§>

 

It was worse than they could have ever imagined.

Their first simulation run was such a disaster that they not only de-synched, but Raleigh chased the rabbit and Yancy was helplessly sucked along. Every bad memory they’d ever gone through together packed into five minutes of hell.   
Getting the shit kicked out of them on the playground as kids, before they learnt how to fight back. 

Watching their dad spiral into a bout of depression so bad that their mother had everything lethal in the house under lock-and-key for two months when their uncle Charles disappeared.

Their mother’s dying breath.

Waking up in an empty house one day, their father gone just like their uncle, without a trace.

Yancy managed to yank both himself and his brother out of it, and he disengaged his harness to stumble over to his shaking brother. This was supposedly par for the course for a first simulation, but when Raleigh’s nose started bleeding even the seasoned techs looked worried. Thus followed an entire day in the medical wing, getting scanned and poked and prodded and analysed in every way imaginable. Yancy kept telling himself that Raleigh had a history of nosebleeds, that this was probably one of those random instances where the kid’s would just start gushing like a broken faucet, sending their father into panic and their mother into an almost supernatural state of calm. But the longer he was left waiting on his uncomfortable gurney after being cleared, his brother still lost somewhere in the warren of medical equipment and staff, the more feeble that hope became.

Finally, when dinner in the canteen was a long distant dream and Yancy was just about ready to charge in there with IV-pole held high, an exhausted doctor made an appearance and informed him that it had just been a nosebleed and nothing more. Raleigh himself followed soon after, back in his orange sim-suit, made all the more garish and ugly by the blood splattered all down the front. Yancy couldn’t help it, he swept his little brother up in the tightest hug he could manage and promptly soaked the ugly orange with snot and tears. The techs were probably going to just burn the suit at this point. Luckily, Yancy felt slightly less pathetic when Raleigh hugged back just as tightly and sobbed just as hard.

The two weeks that followed were the some of the worst of Yancy’s life. Sleep without horrific nightmares was something of the past, and his brother seemed to not even bother anymore if the huge black bags under his eyes were anything to go by. For the first time in his life, Yancy saw his brother drinking coffee before bed to avoid sleep, and they went through hard candies so fast, he was worried for the state of the kid’s teeth.

They had a fight so bad, it nearly got them kicked out of the program. They had been fighting a sim that was one of the milder ones in that it was purely a knock-off from Godzilla, and the sense of familiarity it brought seemed to make it easier to beat. But something happened, a flash of blue eye-shadow and plump lips, and they were de-synching. They got eaten by Godzilla and Yancy, more tired than he had ever been in his life, snapped.

“What the hell was that?! Why the fuck would you choose now of all the times to pine over some random?!”

Raleigh, who had been shaken but somehow taking it in stride, went from perplexed to quietly furious in less than a second. “You know as well as I do that we can’t control what we see in the drift. I’m sorry I lapsed, but it was just a sim. Calm down.”

“Calm down? Just a sim?! We’re being graded, dipshit! You fuck up, we never see the inside of a Jaeger!” He was yanking at the harness ineffectively, trying to free himself.

“Jesus, Yance! It’s one time! We’ve got the best score so far, we can afford to fuck up once!” Raleigh seemed to be disengaging with no problem, and if anything, that made Yancy see red.

“One time?! One time that lost us our chance because you couldn’t man-up and just follow through for once in your life?!”

Because he’d been struggling due to his shaking hands, Yancy was still trapped in his harness when his brother punched him full in the face. But once he got out of there, the only thing that stopped their bloody grapple on the floor of the sim-pod was the appearance of the Marshall and the harsh bark of his voice.

“RANGERS!!” 

Fear had them springing apart and standing at attention, but anger had them shaking even as they were individually ripped a new one in the Marshall’s office.

They didn’t talk to each other until their next simulation the next afternoon, and even then it was less a conversation than it was a a general undertone of regret and sorrow in the drift. They beat that Kaiju somehow, and afterwards they collapsed on the bottom bunk in an exhausted pile of apologetic sibling.

The only thing that kept them going was that they seemed to be getting better with each simulation, and by the fifth, when they were officially being graded for the first time, they took down Onibaba. After that, when they scored a kill for every drop, sleep came easier again, and Yancy finally snapped and told Raleigh that if he ever saw him with a mug in his hand again he was going to make him sleep in a straight-jacket.

He knew they were out of the woods again when his brother replied “But what about tea? Or hot cocoa? Or what if I just wanna hold a mug? WAIT, what if I’m holding it for someone else, hmmm?” 

The next day, when Tendo made his way over to their table positively crushed under the sheer weight of all the mugs he was carrying, Yancy also knew that his brother was in cahoots with his crush and he didn’t know what to think about that. Yancy found himself being able to smile again.

That smile took a nosedive when they were summoned to the Marshall’s office once again. Both of them were all jiggly feet and nervous sniffling as they stood at parade rest outside the ominous looking door. Yancy’s stomach did some kind of interesting tribal dance when the door slammed open and out came the only other remaining pair of American pilots. Jason Heckler, ex-marine, was stomping out and practically steaming from the ears when he stomped past them. His wife, Eileen Heckler, ex-navy, calmly strolled past them with a cool nod.

Yancy didn’t know what to think, and he wasn’t given any chance to try when the Marshall’s distinctive baritone bid them to enter.

Stacker Pentecost was seated behind the biggest most imposing desk Yancy had ever seen, and it still didn’t seem to live up to the sheer intimidation that the Marshall could instil with nothing more than the slight sideways tilt of his perfectly shaved head.

“Rangers Becket, take a seat.” 

This was bad. If they were sitting down then this was really really bad.

“I've looked over your results and scoresheets. You’ve logged an impressive amount of kwoon-time, you’ve had twenty-four kills to thirty drops, and our compatibility, save for a few hiccups,” the scariest two seconds of eye-contact in the history of the universe, “is very satisfactory. Congratulations, Gentlemen. You qualify for a Jeager. You may collect your things. You’re ship leaves at 1600 hours sharp. You’re bound for the California Shatterdome.” 

Well shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five months later. I'm sensing a trend...Formatting might be off. Dunno.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own anything recognisable because duh.


End file.
